How to Create Eye-Catching Point-of-Purchase Retail Displays

One of the biggest trends in the retail industry of late is the movement toward more agile, accessible in-store and point-of-purchase (POP) displays that help consumers better navigate brick-and-mortar stores. What’s more, the physical footprint of point-of-purchase displays has continued to shrink, thus requiring brands to say more with less real estate. 

The challenge for brands in reacting to these shifts is producing point-of-purchase displays that can adapt to new design criteria while still attracting consumer attention and leveraging the proper brand recognition to drive sales.  

It’s a delicate balancing act, particularly as brands are continually asked to do more with less when it comes to their marketing and branding efforts. The good news is there are a handful of guiding principles that can help brands create high-quality point-of-purchase displays that get the job done. 

Here, let’s look at a handful of steps for creating eye-catching point-of-purchase displays to help optimize your merchandising spend.

Choose a construction material that's built to last

When choosing the right construction material for custom retail displays, brands have a variety of options. Sheet metal, wire, tubing, plastic, and lumber offer their own unique benefits or advantages. These materials are also valuable in more of a supporting role or for smaller, more detailed components of your display. 

In fact, here’s an example where tubing and wire helped reinforce and differentiate a retail display from the competition.

Steel – carbon steel in particular — is a point-of-purchase construction material that is versatile and suitable for a wide range of applications, but its strength and durability helps prevent cracking, warping, splitting, or rotting, even with consistent, long-term use. What’s more, steel can be treated to withstand corrosion and rust from exposure to environmental elements such as rain, wind, sunlight, and high temperatures.   

Steel helps extend the service life and appearance of your display, and using steel also decreases the chance that you’ll have to replace your display due to suboptimal performance.

Consider finishings to enhance the look and performance

Regardless of the construction material you choose, incorporating some kind of finish can not only help enhance the look and visual branding of your display, but it can also increase the performance of your display and maximize your ROI over time. Identifying the right finish for your display depends on a variety of factors, some of which include the environment where your display is located, the construction materials used, and the design of your display. 

Highly compatible with carbon steel, powder coating is a dry finishing process that uses different combinations — depending on the application — of polymer resins, adhesion agents, and other additives to seal and protect your display.

Plus, a display can be powder coated in a variety of stock and custom colors and patterns, or using a range of techniques to help ensure your custom display accurately reflects your branding. Read more about how powder coating can help increase the longevity and value of your point-of-purchase display.

Think modular and mobile

A point-of-purchase display that leverages mobility via a simplified set up, breakdown, or movement process has more value compared to static displays, or those that are difficult to set up and cumbersome to move. In addition, retail displays and fixtures that are designed and manufactured using more neutral colors make it quick and easy to alter brand elements based on specific sales and marketing campaigns.  

A modular approach to display design that allows for more deployment flexibility also makes it more likely your display gets in front of customers regardless of the layout or configuration of the retail environment. 

This is where displays that are knockdown, collapsible, or even produced with wheels for enhanced mobility can give your display a leg up on the competition via increased versatility and flexibility. In today’s retail environment, the more locations your.displays can be incorporated to, the more likely it is your display will perform.  

However, these kinds of displays require a high degree of planning and fabrication experience to ensure your custom display is engineered and manufactured to the precise specifications necessary for an advanced level of mobility and configuration flexibility. 

Franklin Display Group has helped a number of brands put these steps — and others — into action to create high-quality, custom point-of-purchase displays. Our planning and design, engineering and prototyping, and manufacturing teams have the skills and experience to produce custom displays based on your precise specifications and requirements. Contact us today to get started on your next display project.