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Never judge a book by its cover, as the saying goes. Try telling that to a visual merchandiser; the old adage doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny in the marketing world. The truth is that, ultimately, the way to win a consumer’s heart and mind is all too often through their eyes. So books and their covers be damned; the frontline of the retail world is all about looks – and lust – at first sight.

The UAE is a country now dominated by the mall experience, and as this phenomenon spreads every retailer recognizes that visual merchandising is more important than ever. Shopping (or window shopping in tough times) has become both a national pastime and a tourist attraction, and Dubai’s stores are upping their visual merchandising game. Where you part with your hard-earned cash is a matter of personal taste and brand preference, of course, but it also depends on how a retailer presents itself in an environment filled with competitors vying for your attention.

“It’s the first impression that the customer will take of the store and the last impression at the same time,” says Mustafa Abed, visual merchandiser for Mont Blanc at The Dubai Mall. “It’s a journey for your customer. When you have an attractive window display, it’s going to attract the customer inside. You give them an invitation letter to enter your store. As long as they’re in the store, they need a guide inside, and that’s what happens with the way you lay out the furniture. Basically, you control them from the time they enter the store to the time they go back out.”  

BEAR ESSENTIALS. One of the masters of visual merchandising was Gene Moore, Tiffany’s vice-president for window display. For 39 years, Moore operated on New York’s Fifth Avenue, turning heads with his creations for the Manhattan store’s famous five windows. His The New York Times obituary, printed in November 1998, offers a glimpse of how his creativity made Tiffany’s the most talked about shop-front in the world. It said, “[…] it was his window displays, especially at Tiffany's, that established his reputation for zany creativity. He used broken glass as a motif so often that alarmed passersby were forever calling the police, and once, during a local water shortage, he insisted on replacing the water in a fountain display with gin. […] When he was stumped, as he was when it came time for his last Tiffany's windows, in December 1994, Mr. Moore knew where to turn, in that case to his favorite teddy bear, Porridge, which explains why Mr. Moore filled all five windows with teddy bears.”

Like New York, Dubai can now boast all the big international retailers, including luxury American department store, Saks Fifth Avenue. But the visual merchandising designs for these stores come from head offices abroad, something Jon Thompson, visual merchandising manager at Saks Fifth Avenue, Bur Juman, says posed a few challenges when the store opened its doors in 2004. “The challenge of trying to interpret what they’re doing in the US, to introduce the way we were doing things at Saks there and bring that to Dubai was new for a lot of people,” he says. “But once they started understanding it, they really liked it and we were successful.”

It seems they are not the only ones: a walk in any of the country’s malls will bring you into contact with windows which are by turns cool, glamorous, funky, classic, or sometimes just plain dazzling. But visual merchandising needs to be more than just easy on the eye.

SUPPORT THE BRAND. “I think there’s plenty of room for it to be designed in such a way that it can be very creative,” says Jonathan Ford, creative partner at Pearlfisher, a London-based independent design partnership. “But it has to be in support of what the brand is about. And I think the most successful visual merchandising does exactly that; it allows the brand to breathe, but adds a certain level of freshness. Visual merchandising is very important, because if it is in conflict with what the brand is about, then it’s going to confuse people’s perceptions of the brand.”

Diesel, which has a reputation for its funky and sometimes outrageous window displays, knows a thing or two about matching creativity to both the brand and the marketing purpose. “I look at visual merchandising from a consumer’s point of view, but I also look at it from a company’s point of view,” says Khaled Abdel Majid, Diesel’s visual merchandising manager in Dubai. “As a consumer, I walk by and I see what catches my attention. What would make me want to go into a store and buy something that I see in a window? As a business person, how would I make sure that this consumer’s attention is grabbed immediately? You have to be very trend-oriented, and know exactly what’s happening in the market.”

One company which seems to have the art of visual merchandising down to a tee is British luxury department store Harvey Nichols. While their prowess may have gone to their heads a little, there’s no doubt they’ve got stunning window displays at their Mall of the Emirates branch. “Visual merchandising at Harvey Nichols is firmly based on one simple principle: luxury,” says visual merchandising manager Matteo Magnanini. “It’s a tool to enhance the appearance of the merchandise on the floor, a mechanism to communicate to a customer and ultimately can influence the decision to buy.”

Stores like these change their window displays frequently enough to keep passers-by wanting to come back for more, with guidelines and general design concepts coming from head offices in Germany for Mont Blanc, and from Italy for Diesel. Harvey Nichols displays, like other retailers, are changed on seasonal, promotional and festive occasions, and can run for as long as eight weeks or as little as three weeks. Abed says Mont Blanc changes its window display every 21 days, without changing the merchandise in-store every time, in order not to confuse clients.
At Saks Fifth Avenue, Thompson says window displays are changed once or twice a month, and that fashions are changed “at least every two weeks even if we don’t change the backdrop.” Each mannequin (the designer section has around 50) is changed every two to three days. “We have customers who come in every few days, and they want to see something new,” he says. “So it’s good to rotate and keep everything fresh.”

RULES OF THE GAME. While there are no strict “dos” and “don’ts” in this industry, every visual merchandiser worth his or her salt would agree on the guiding design principles. “Be aware of your local trends, your local markets, what this market needs you to do, while at the same time maintaining the company image or the brand name’s image without sacrificing it,” says Abdel Majid.
“There should always be a reason for the display or the merchandising, such as a promotion, event, product launch, or sales drive,” says Magnanini. “If a display is being created without guidelines, the final outcome may have no meaning to customers.”
Ford, with design and the environment in mind, offers a note of caution. “Don’t be excessive,” he says. “Material wastage is a big issue now, and I think people are starting to be turned off by excess. Whereas expensive packaging once used to be the signal of kudos, now it’s a signal of excessiveness and waste. The world has changed.”
The world may have changed, but visual merchandising remains one of the most powerful tools in a retailer’s armory. Done badly, it can kill a product, store or brand. But done well? As the renowned Gene Moore proved in New York, the best examples of the art can transcend the medium to become not just the focal point of a store or street or mall, but a talking point for an entire city – and far beyond.

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