B2B Merchandising Program

Designing an award winning, modular, and impactful POS display program for Signify Canada that stands the test of time.

Unlike developing merchandising for B2C retailers, developing for electrical distribution can be tricky and quite costly with the amount of custom work involved. With a number of variables at play, my colleague and I devised a plan to come up with a system that could be mixed and matched as a tailored solution without sacrificing the integrity of the brand.

Objective

This project came out of a growing demand for new merchandising for B2B. Up until this point our electrical distributors were outfitted with an existing supply of material that were made by the previous marketing team and many custom installations. This was part of an aging infrastructure which we had been struggling to keep up to date. Knowing that an impending company name change was coming—from Philips Lighting to Signify, not knowing the true scope of the change at the time—we knew if we were to start anything new it would have to be easy to update once we have the new brand direction.

Research

In order to come up with an optimal design for the revised program, we initiated a series of surveys and site visits in order to assess the current distributor landscape. Once we gathered all the data it was clear we had a big opportunity to utilize slat wall of varying run sizes dependent on location and customer.

This led to the conceptualization of a modular system of slat wall mountable components that could be mixed and matched according to product mix, language, and space while allowing for easy updates down the road.

Components & Logistics

Having this concept in mind we reached out to our display vendor to flush out a functional prototype to test out and refine. It was decided the system would be designed around 3 core components:

• Demo Units: Metal panels with functional products (corded w/ plug, on/off switches and dimmers if required) and magnetic graphics pre-applied

• Graphic Units: Metal panels that mount magnetic graphics covering a range of products (graphics would be packed separately from the panels to maintain modularity)

  • A variant of this panel would also contain a power hub on the back with extension cord to plug in multiple demo units and make wire management easy

• Header Cards: Cintra panels with mounting hardware available in 4’ / 6’ / 8’ segments

All components would be individually packed in ship ready cartons (and tubes for graphics), with part numbers setup in SAP so that they could be inventoried, ordered, and shipped directly from our warehouse. At the customer's end the installation is as easy as opening the box, and hooking it onto the slat walls (or pegboard once we redesigned the hooks for a later iteration).

Information Design

Having flushed out the concepts, I started the process of gathering product data to develop a design system that would work consistently across all modular components—utilizing spec sheets and literature for inspiration and a source of marketing copy to maintain continuity. Given the scale of the components in a busy showroom environment, I ensured the design would have high visual impact with all important product data easy to identify and read from afar.

Customer Planning

Once production was near completion, the channel team began to identify branches with the help of our sales team. Having developed a merchandising order form as part of a channel marketing toolkit I created, the requests were easy to process. I created planograms for each installation that could be signed off by our customers prior to order and installation. All customer / branch data was managed in a master file which I had been building throughout the development of this program. This would serve as a tracker which would later be used to automate the update process that was still impending.

Signify Update

In 2019 we had a firm direction on the new company name (Signify) and brand strategy, so I began the process of developing updated graphics and design optimizations. Having tracked 146 installations up to this point, I was able to determine replacement quantities for magnetic graphics and forecast inventory for future installation with ease. A pivot table outlining all locations and required material was provided to our vendor who would handle shipping logistics in order to prevent bottlenecking our own warehouse.

Awards & Recognition

This merchandising program would go onto receive awards internally and externally for its versatility and measurable impact it had on daily sales figures of our stocking products. Having seen the success and praise from our customers, this program continues to be implemented at branches across Canada with other Signify markets looking at ways to replicate what we’ve achieved.