After several sessions of blood, sweat and tears doing initial cleanup, I made my first trip to Home Depot. I went armed with zero knowledge of plants and certainly no gardening experience. In retrospect, I guess I was trying to “landscape” rather that “garden”. I could probably write an entire blog about that statement but I think many of you get what I’m talking about.

With “landscaping” in mind, I drew on my 15+ years of visual merchandising experience to help me figure out what to do. There are some golden rules of retail visual merchandising

• repeat focal points – (colors, shapes, pieces) throughout and area that tie a larger area together and move you through the the area either physically, visually or emotionally.
• group things in three’s – assymetry stops the eye and makes things more “interesting”. Also,
• pyramids and rivers – this makes sure things aren’t “flat” or “boring” and bring the customer in as things “cascade” down. Again, it moves the eye through the display.
• repetition – there’s no better way to make something small seems big than to group a bunch of them together nice and neatly!