The beauty of moveable equipment.

To keep the appearance of your store changeable and flexible, it’s worth investing in some portable shop display equipment to make sure changing the look of your shop doesn’t require a full rebuild! Shelving4Shops can supply a top quality range of highly versatile dump bins, wire stacking shelves and wire shelving. These pieces of lightweight shop equipment offer exciting options for promotional displays and quick shop face uplifts. They’re also great for making use of small, awkward spaces, such as corners and the centres of wide aisles. You’ll never have wasted space again!

All these lightweight display equipment options mean the look of your store is easy to update and change whenever you need to. It’s important to do this regularly so your customers see something new every time they visit. This in turn sparks curiosity to explore your store for new products - and in turn will most probably end up in the customer making an impulse buy of some sort.

Dump bins are great for displaying lots of single products - especially great for selling end of line items, or ones that are difficult to stack, e.g. single crisp packets or footballs. Ideal for placing at the end of aisles or by the till area, these can be stacked and offer easy access to tempt customers to impulse buy.

Wire dump bins have adjustable bases that allow you to raise or lower the height of your products. These are also great for tempting customers as they wait to pay, as you can use these to form the queueing area, filling them with tempting treats and sale items that your customers won’t be able to resist.

Have an awkwardly sized wall space? Why not use our wire shelves to make that wall work for your products! These are freestanding and lightweight, allowing you to move them around and change the look of your shop with ease.

Gotta love the Summer Sales!

Everyone loves summer - the long warm days, the outdoor meals and the light evenings. One of the most exciting things about summer for stores is the potential for creating stunning summery displays and increasing sales. During shopping trips in the summer, the heat is often tiring, so cool, air conditioned stores are refreshing sanctuaries for customers.

The potential for window displays is limited only by your imagination - and it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg! You can use craft materials and textiles to create summery scenes and entice customers in. It’s the perfect excuse to bring in crazy bright colours, including both neons and pastels.

Beach or swimming pool scenes are always a winner when attracting the attention of passers by. Why not visit a charity shop to see what little bits and pieces you can pick up on the cheap to dress your window or store with? Even if you don’t need the clothes, you may find cheap items worth buying for the fabric to use as a backdrop or to wrap around furniture to carry a theme throughout the decor. Create a beach theme with sand, blue material for the water and why not create some clouds with cotton wool? None of this costs too much money and can be the difference between a customer walking by your store or stopping to enter because the display caught their eye. Make sure you click rss to keep updated for everything shelving4shops!

Presenting Wine the Shelving4Shops Way!

There is little more tempting, for the wine lovers among us at least, than the elegant presentation of a wine tower within a store. Wine bottles are quite the prettier grocery item, with a variety of bottle shapes and colours that can make for an eye catching display. When done correctly, the presentation can suggest sophistication and fine dining, something that many people aspire to do in their own home, with adventurous cooking and those extra special meals.

When trying to entice people to buy wine, the way it’s presented definitely makes all the difference to attracting customers. Clearly labelled, with special offers and enticing deals, means people will wander over and browse what’s available. A wine tower is a great promotional tool, with an attractive display of bottles that doesn’t take up much space if your store is on the smaller side. Using height instead of width, a wine tower is also a quick means for a customer to pick up a bottle as they’re passing by.

http://www.shelving4shops.co.uk have a great range of wine tower displays in both black and silver, adding a modern touch to the appearance of your store. Each tier has a wire balcony to prevent the bottles being knocked to the floor and broken, while allowing for easy removal and re-stocking.

Security In Store

When it comes to protecting your store, there’s little more important than keeping an eye on your products and making sure theft isn’t an issue. When you’re running a store, it’s impossible to watch every corner and every aisle, so it’s definitely worth investing in some anti-theft devices to deter any thieves from potentially costing you a lot of money.

Stolen goods can put a huge strain on the budget of smaller companies or new businesses, so spending a little money to deter thieves in the first place is a wise move.

While gadgets such as CCTV or surveillance cameras are a great way to capture and record any untoward activity in your store, the systems can be expensive and costly to have installed. A cheaper option which is ideal for small or new stores is to have security mirrors positioned so you can see every part of your store from a single point - the till area, for example.

Shelving4Shop’s convex security mirror comes with a flexible mounting arm to allow you to adjust the angle and cover those awkward blind spots. The mirror has a diameter of 400mm and is fitted with circular safety glass. Priced at just £24.99, it’s the perfect way to deter thieves and make sure you can keep a watchful eye on the rest of your store without having to leave the till area.

Promotions Promotions Promotions!

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One of the most important things to consider in your store is how to keep customers coming back. Offering regular promotions will make sure customers keep coming back to check what bargains they can get.

It’s therefore important to create promotional displays that are visible from outside the store, whether this is in a window or a doorway. The signage needs to be clear and a reasonable size so it can be read at a distance. Colours need to be eye catching and vibrant to attract attention, but they also need to be consistent with sale and company colours. Frequent, in store sales will entice people to make impulse purchases and tell their friends about you.

Promotions are also more likely to increase brand awareness, so if you have a new product or supplier that you need to promote offering discounts and creating displays to advertise this will increase awareness and push sales. Make sure you allow room in your marketing budget for promotions and sales such as these. If you’re not getting enough customers to offset the cost of an in store promotion, you may end up losing money.

Why not add an incentive to spread the word about your business by offering the chance to enter a giveaway competition - all the customer has to do is refer a friend and fill in their details for the chance to win an exciting prize. You also will gain a database of email addresses which you can then use to market back to! Let us help you with your store today @http://www.shelving4shops.co.uk/about-us

Shelving4Shop Come On & Get Your Fruit & Veg Outside!

There’s no two ways about it. A colourful display of fruit and veg is a truly enticing sight. It grabs a passerby’s attention and tempts people into the store to see what other treats lie inside. Fresh produce is a great way to show off your shop’s wares, however you don’t want to leave it outside - and lugging heavy boxes of fruit and veg inside every evening is not a viable option if some staff can’t manage the weight.

Instead, consider http://www.shelving4shops.co.uk/ outside display unit, which sits on sturdy castor wheels, allowing you to move the entire display with ease. Shop staff can then put the produce away each night and wheel it back out again every morning. There’s no lifting and you can lock the castor wheels to ensure your display doesn’t move once it’s in place. The display unit comes in a range of different lengths to work with the space you have available, maximising the advertising potential you have from your produce display.

The tough, plastic vegetable trays come with the frame and keep your produce safe and clean. Again, the trays are available in a range of different sizes to match your frame, allowing you to customise the display and make sure it works perfectly for your store.

Christmas is just around the corner…

Well, it’s not far off in terms of retail and it’s essential to make sure you’re ready way in advance of the Christmas shopping period. There’s a lot to plan, so here are a few pointers to get you started…

Plan your staff cover so you have enough people to look after all your customers. You don’t want to have long queues because you only have one till open, as you’ll end up with customers putting things down and walking out when they get bored of the wait. Make sure if anyone is on holiday during the Christmas period you have sufficient cover to make sure staffing levels are going to cope with the increase in customer numbers. 

Plan your products carefully, with the right seasonal products that will make great Christmas gifts and tempt customers. Make sure you’ve got enough stock to ensure you don’t run out and leave anyone disappointed. 

Give yourself a goal - take a look at last years sales figures to give yourself something to beat. How will you do this? More stock? More promotions? Put a plan together to help you meet this target.

Don’t forget to plan for your January sales too - what items will be in the sale, what displays will you have to let your customers know what items are included? Don’t forget you can customise existing displays or create new ones. 

Click here to find great new and used shelves and display units at Shelving4Shops, all at great prices!  

Making Your Convenience Store Convenient!

When you visit a convenience store, you’re often in a bit of a hurry - you might be popping in on your way home from work, trying to get round the store with a couple of kids in tow or simply doing a food shop when hungry (always dangerous!), so you want to get your food out of the door and home to eat in as short a time as possible. So what’s more frustrating than finding there’s no shopping baskets or trolleys to hand, meaning you have to balance your items in your arms, making life even more difficult and time consuming - especially if you have a child who wants to be carried too!

When considering the layout of your store, don’t forget to make space to put your baskets and trolleys. You need to ensure they are as close as possible to the door, without being in the way or creating a trip hazard. Neatly stacked baskets will encourage customers to grab one as they pass by- and having a basket encourages them to buy more as they have an easy way to carry all their goodies!

Shelving4Shops has a great range of sturdy baskets available, in blue, green, red and black. They’re all lightweight and easy to carry, with a comfortable handle which is easy to grip. The baskets all stack neatly, while Shelving4Shops also sell a basket stacker, which adds a clean, professional image to your stack of baskets- it also raises them up off the floor, making it easier to customers (particularly the elderly or disabled) to pick up. The basket stacker comes on small caster wheels, allowing you to easily and safely move around stacks of baskets. This makes it great to place by a till, so when customers empty their baskets, you can then simply wheel the stack back to the door- making your life easier, quicker and more convenient!

The Lowdown On Fruit And Vegetables!

If you’re a seller of fresh produce, you’ll know the importance of keeping all your fruit and vegetables in an easy-to-access manner while protecting them from the risk of bruising or damage as customers rifle through them. Healthy, pristine looking produce is always going to sell much better than damaged, tired-looking produce, so it pays to make sure you have suitable containment for your fruit and vegetables.

At Shelving4Shops we have sturdy fruit and vegetable trays, ideal for displaying produce in a safe, contained way that will still allow you to create attractive displays to catch the eye of your customers, while keeping the fresh produce safe and secure.

We found the best tips for selling your fruit and veg are the following:

• Tilt your trays forward, to make sure the produce is visible even from a distance. This makes sure no one misses it!
• Make sure the containers are always completely full to create the illusion of bounty. Pile things up to add a more impressive look!
• If you can, line your trays with fabric or bubble wrap to further prevent them from bruising or damage.
• Make sure you go through your produce every couple of days and pull out anything that’s rotting or looking limp.
• Display all fresh produce at least six inches off the ground.

Making Your Business Greene

Running a store is an expensive business, so we’ve put together a few ideas to help you save money and make your business more eco-friendly.

1. Using the right bulbs to save money on your energy bills and reduce consumption. LEDs offer a much more energy-efficient lighting solution, so it’s worth investing in these as they’ll pay for themselves in cost-saving.
2. A simple change in cleaning products can help the environment- switch to less toxic, or even better, make your own! You can make a simple, effective cleaning solution from water and distilled vinegar. This is cheap and friendly to the environment!
3. Buy used fixtures for your store. Used shelves and gondolas are a great area to save money in! Shelving4Shops offer a great range of used fixtures, which are in tip top condition and can be dismantled for easy transportation.
4. Use plants to help improve the air quality. Stores often suffer from stale air, lending a stuffy quality to the shop. This can be improved by adding a wall of plants which will help filter the air- more effective if the plants are placed below the air conditioning unit, helping the fresh air to circulate better around the shop.
5. Substitute plastic bags for paper ones - recycled paper bags would be even better. Make receipts optional- ask before printing one, to help save paper- you can offer to email one instead and save a trees!
6. Make sure you purchase energy-efficient equipment. When you buy a new printer or computer, for example, make sure you compare the energy ratings before making your purchase.
7. Turn your equipment off! Fridges and freezers aside, most equipment can safely be switched off at night, but many businesses leave them on to save time in the morning, or simply because they forget. If you can shut everything off each night to avoid sucking "vampire power" to dormant equipment.
   
   

Arranging Newspapers

Your newspaper display stand is an essential bit of equipment to preserve the life of your papers while offering your customers a clear view of what you sell, so they can find exactly what they’re after. One thing to remember is to stack the newspaper with the name at the top, to save your papers from being leafed through by customers searching for their daily read. This helps keep your papers from becoming dog-eared and dishevelled, as customers won’t buy these - everyone will want a newspaper that’s in perfect condition.

Shelving4Shops are proud to offer a selection of top quality display units, perfect for safely storing your newspapers. Our sturdy and durable units have a clear plastic riser at the front to prevent the papers from slipping off the unit and onto the floor. The angled tiers allow for easier viewing for customers, while the strong fixings ensure your display unit will last for years to come. The shelves are made from heavy duty powder-coated steel, so you can be sure your products will be safe, while the freestanding unit means you won’t have to worry about fixing it to a wall.

All our shelving can be made into a bespoke arrangement using other shelving units, providing a versatile option to your store layout plan.

Get The Message Across!

One thing most customers really hate is having to ask the price of something. Whether the product has been picked up and put down in the wrong place, or whether you’ve committed the crime of forgetting to put a price label on, it will still result in the same undesirable consequence - the customer will abandon the item.

When looking at shop shelving for your store, it’s essential to put some thought into the detailing you’ll need to add to make sure those shelves work for you. You need to let your customers see how much each item costs, making it clear which price is for which item. Customers won’t spend long working this out and if they can’t see a price at a quick glance, they’ll more than likely put the item back down again.

Don’t miss out on a sale, make sure you always let your customers know how much something costs by using price tags or Epos strips across the front of your shelves. These are available in a variety of different colours, so you can match them to your brand colours to add continuity and a smart touch to the appearance of your store. Make sure the price is clear (and if it’s per kg, for example, or per item/box/pack, etc) and ensure your item is clearly labelled so the customer doesn’t have to deduce for themselves which product the price label is referring to. This is especially important if you have several different sizes or weights of a particular item.

Shelving4Shops have a great range of Epos strips in a range of colours at unbeatable prices! Kit your shop out now and make those shelves sell for you.

How High Should Your Shelves Be?

Shelving height should be determined by a number of factors, including ceiling height and the type of products being placed on the units. There is no hard and fast rule about the heights certain items should be at, so first and foremost take into consideration the message you want to convey about your store and how you want customers to perceive your brand.

As a general idea, taller shelving conveys a sense of a bigger volume of products, with a wider selection and lower or discounted prices. Shelving at a lower height says more high quality, bespoke products, more expensive and limited selection, with a more intimate shopping experience. You can use this guide to add a variety of different feature points in your store, to add sale areas, speciality areas and broader, more generic areas to shop in. You can also use this to segregate sections and create departments.

Ceiling height shouldn’t make a difference to the height units you choose, so base your choice on the products you sell and the impression you want to convey to your customers.

Making The Most Of Summer Sales

There’s no denying it- every customer loves a sale, knowing they’re saving money with their shopping, grabbing bargains and making the most of the low prices you offer.

Summer is a great time to offer a sale, while everyone’s mood is just a little bit better as the sun is shining and the weather is (hopefully!) behaving! People are more inclined to shop and to take their time while browsing your products, so make sure you take full advantage of this, luring people out of their back gardens and into your store.  

So how can you make sure you make the most of this? Here are a few tips for luring in those customers and increasing your sales!

• Signage, signage, signage! Place brightly coloured signs to advertise your sale and grab the customer’s attention. Make sure your window displays shout about your sale in a way that a passer-by can’t fail to notice!

• Ensure that customers know exactly which area of your shop holds the sale items. No one wants to have to stand and fathom out what’s included in the sale and what isn’t- this is a sure turn-off to purchasing!

• Identifying your sale area is a great chance for your to revamp your store’s layout, to give customers something new and fresh visually when they enter your store.

• Sales can get messy, so ensure your items are laid out on shelving that has plenty of room for everything to be picked up and put down again

• Get creative - don’t be afraid to combine different types of shelving. Put a variety of  combinations together to create the most effective sale area and display your products in the best way.
  
  

Shop Racking

To truly show off what you have to offer to customers, it’s worth putting some time and thought into how you display your wares and the equipment you’ll use to hold your products. Take into account the type of store you have and what sort of items you’ll stock to make the right choices for your business.

Depending on your products, you’ll need to look at different types of shelving, from magazine racking to gondola shelving. It’s also worth considering extras like dump bins where you can create sale promotions or sell off excess stock.

If you’ll be frequently revamping the layout of your store, make sure you think about interchangeable and non-permanent fixtures that don’t require huge amounts of effort and work to move. Shelving4Shops offers freestanding units that don’t require bolts or fixing to the wall, with a huge variety in the types of shelves that we offer.

Why not make a visit to our showroom where you can find examples of all our shelving, fully constructed so you can get a feel for how your store can be laid out to make sure your customers get the full shopping experience at your shop. We also sell top quality second hand shelving, so we can help if you need to kit your shop out on a budget. 

Shopping Psychology

When you want to pop into a shop and get a pint of milk, do you end up walking out with a basket full of other things you didn’t intend to buy? Supermarkets are brilliant at making us impulse buy, so how do they do it?

There are many different tricks to getting people to buy more than they intend to. Major brands and important, popular items are placed in the centre of aisles, increasing the length of time the shopper is in the shop and making sure they are exposed to as many items are possible.

Displays are everywhere! Not only do supermarkets have long, endless aisles, but even at the ends there are eye catching displays with even more products as are the till areas - so the customer is never not looking at products!

If the shop sells fresh bread, one of the oldest tricks in the book is pumping that freshly-baked smell into the store. It’s often poured out through the ventilation system throughout the entire day to give the illusion that the bread is being baked constantly, giving you the freshest product!

The endless psychology of shopping entices customers to buy more than they ever intended, in clever ways that customers simply don’t notice! 

Choosing Your Shelving

Finding the right shelving for your store is critical for the success of your business, to make sure your customers will have the best shopping experience and buy your products. You need to display your products clearly and efficiently, and to maximise the viewing exposure.

Start the planning by thinking about your products. What will you sell? Will you have heavy products? If so, you’ll need to make sure you have a display unit that can withstand the weight of your heaviest products.

Think about the dimensions of your products. The shape and size of the products needs to be taken into consideration when choosing the right shelving. Will the depth of a shelf be enough for you to stack products or will you need a peg board unit to hang them on? You have many options, so think about what will make your products look good.

The other things to consider include accessibility - how many of a particular item will you be holding? You need to ensure customers can get to your items easily and quickly, so make sure your shelving is adequate for your items.

Magazine Magic!

Magazines have a tendency to end up looking scruffy after they’ve been out for a while, so it pays to look after them and invest in specific magazine shelving to keep them secure and neat.

To prevent them getting damaged, Shelving4Shops sell specific shelving, designed to keep your magazines, stationery and even greeting cards neat and tidy. These units come with eight angled, tiered shelves, with a 470mm wide base, perfect for stacking newspapers. Additional shelves can be purchased and added if needed.

As with all their units, Shelving4Shops offer fully adaptable and adjustable magazine shelves, giving you the flexibility to create versatile and changeable displays. You’ll find the units strong and sturdy, giving you the peace of mind that when you buy, your products will be safely supported with high quality shelving that will last. These wall shelving units come in three different heights: 1.8m, 2.1m and 2.4m

These versatile units can be easily connected to other shelving units, so you can create unique runs or aisles that work for you. You can work these units into your displays to ensure your store flows and customers don’t bunch up where people stop to browse the magazines or cards, which can cause your store to look over-crowded or badly planned.

Storing Cigarettes

When it comes to storing cigarettes, the new rules make it very clear that you need to keep all cigarettes need sliding doors or screens fitted, otherwise the store owner can face hefty fines. To avoid this, make sure your cigarette gantry complies with the rules when it comes to storing tobacco products.

Shelving4Shops offers a cost-effective, high quality cigarette gantry, which features sliding doors as standard - these are easily fitted to make sure you adhere to the law and don’t find yourself getting fined! Each cigarette gantry from Shelving4Shops comes with cigarette pushers and dividers to help you keep stock of your tobacco products. This also enables you to store at least 112 different types of cigarettes with 7 separate, adjustable shelves. The gantry is a compact size and can be wall mounted or put on a shelf meaning it takes up little space behind the counter. Epos strips are fitted to the front of the shelves, allowing you to clearly display the prices of your tobacco products.  

Make sure you choose the right storage products for your store to give your customers the best shopping experience and help your business boom!  

Make The Most Of What You’ve Got

The best floor plans will make the most of your store’s square footage, while creating displays that offer your customers the best shopping experience and give a good impression of your company. It’s worth researching the best floor plan for your type of business, as what is best for a convenience store, for example, may not be the best for a specialist shop.

A diagonal floor plan gives great visibility for both cashiers and customers, and encourages positive traffic flow for a self serve type of shop. Your wall spaces are very much useable, maximising on the space available for both displaying and using signage to help your customers shop and encourage impulse buys.

If you have a more specialist store, then it’s worth putting the effort into making your store look high end and more expensive, conveying the message that you sell exciting, high quality products. Use your space more liberally and look at an angular floor plan, with curves and soft angles to make displays that more focussed on individual products.

If you sell clothing, take a look at geometric floor plans, which are great for creating displays that are “out of the ordinary” without costing you an arm and a leg to set up. You can create feature points and use signage to let customers know where to find what.

For high quality display units, take a look at Shelving4Shops and their great range that will help you set up shop without breaking the bank. We know how important it is to get a great set up on a budget to balance the books, so we sell both new and used units.

Visit our showroom or give us a call to chat over how we can help!