Tips to Pair Your Pieces for the Ultimate Look Your Customer Will Love

Whether it’s dressing a mannequin in a top-notch ensemble or placing pieces that look great together next to each other on your counter displays, the way that you visually display your merchandise is über important in selling your goods.

According to researchers behind the book See What I’m Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses, Dr. L.D. Rosenblum, Dr. Harold Stolovitch and Dr Erica Keeps, most of the info our brains process (a whopping 83%) comes via our sense of sight. Looks are important when it comes to your store! This goes for teensy boutiques, large stores that cater to the whole family and wholesale clothing vendors.

Here are 5 tips on how to organize your merchandise in a way that your customers will love.

1. Research, Research, Research

Or to put it in a more romantic way: find style inspiration all around you. Magazines, television, Instagram, online boutiques, right outside your front door—you name it, and outfit inspiration is there. Find what looks best paired together—both in your opinion and the opinion of fashion experts, like Women’s Wear Daily and Allure.

2. Change With the Seasons

It may seem like an obvious rule, but some visual merchandisers forget it: always keep your store seasonally appropriate. Keep the weather—and the trends of the season—in mind when executing your visual merchandising, especially at the front of your store, on the walls and on mannequins. Knits, light jackets, activewear and denim are bought and worn year-round, but keep product categories like swimwear, chunky knits, sandals and shearling-lined boots in the back until it’s their time to shine.

3. Make Mannequins Look Marvelous

It’s a no-brainer that styling mannequins shows your audience how to wear certain styles and which pieces play well together. One fact to always keep in mind is that nude mannequins are a turn-off to customers; never keep an undressed mannequin on your floor!

Before you begin to clothe your human-like prop, press or steam all pieces. Some say to remove price tags, but we think leaving them on for customers to peek at is a smarter move. Pro tip: Use binder clips so that clothing fits perfectly. Safety pins can work for this as well, as long as they won’t damage your garment by leaving holes or tears. And don’t forget about the details. Complete your mannequin’s overall look with coordinating accessories, shoes and maybe even a fun wig.

4. Keep It Simple With Countertop Displays

The beauty of a counter display is that often there’s storage underneath the countertop, allowing for you to stockpile the bottom shelves with the same silhouettes—think tees, tanks and shorts, for example—in varying styles and patterns so that your customers can mix and match with ease.

5. Get Social

Now that you know how to make your inventory look beautiful, you can take your advertising to the next level with social media. If you read our previous blog post How to Use Instagram Marketing For Your Boutique, you know just how easy and budget-friendly social media can be to promote your business, whether it’s a wholesale clothing store or vintage boutique.

One type of photo to post on Facebook, Twitter, etc. involves having your employees (or real models) show off fabulous outfits in interesting locations, like we do on our Instagram (J. Crew does it well too). If you or an employee has a knack for styling like ModCloth does, arrange your garments flat—or keep a photo minimalist like Madewell does on Instagram by simply hanging a single garment on a high-quality hanger and throwing it up on a white or solid background.

What’s your best-selling outfit? How is it visually merchandised in your store? Tell us in the comments below!