The art of presentation

The company has now presented the latest trends at a conference in Dortmund. It all started with the grocery business at Dutch company Jos de Vries. Established as a design agency in Maarssen in the Netherlands in 1987, it concentrated primarily on developing ideas in this segment initially. 25 years on, the company employs 65 staff and has four further departments with offices in Germany, Russia and India. Its areas of business have expanded too, and it now focuses on new retail concepts and visual merchandising for DIY stores and pet product stores among other things. It’s a well-known fact that bricks and mortar retailers in the pet supplies sector are increasingly feeling the heat from the steadily growing online trade – but how can the sector assert itself against the virtual world? For Jos de Vries, the answer to this question is clear. The retail trade must not come to a standstill. Only steady evolution in the areas of shopfitting, social media and in-store communication will create a secure economic climate for retailers. When it comes to modern shopfitting, a wide variety of factors that have to be taken into account in a good store concept come together, emphasises Suzan Smeets, creative director at Jos de Vries Marketing. Good shopfitting should render the store’s entire range visible. There’s a specific reason for this: “If a customer sees the entire range when shopping in a store, he or she will remember later what the store sells.” If the customer then needs a particular product, he will remember the store and return.“ The outside must look right The job isn’t done, however, simply by making the different products in a store clearly visible. Customers must first find their way to one of the countless pet stores around. To ensure that that happens, according to Christian Rikkers, CEO of Jos de Vries, what shoppers will find inside the stores must also be conveyed on the outside by an attractive façade. Ernst Consenheim, head of the Strategy & Format department at Jos de Vries, says that the shop window plays an important role in this type of external presentation. This is where today’s modern technologies can be brought to bear ex­tremely effectively. Above all, more use should be made here of QR codes, which customers can scan with their mobile phone to obtain more information about products or promotions in the store. The use of interactive touchscreens on which passers-by can find out more about the store and its product range is…