Draw Up Your Brand’s Road Map

We all need road maps, particularly us merchants. There’s so much good stuff out there to choose from, so many different directions you can take in merchandising your catalog, that you need to find ways to navigate.

In my 20-plus years as a creative merchant, I’ve always made product fit charts my strategic tool of choice as I sift and sort through thousands of product possibilities for each brand’s offerings. I treat them as my merchandising road maps, driving me to the very heart of each brand I work with.

They help me edit the multitude of products I see at trade shows and in industry publications, or ideas vendors submit or internal employees bring forth, and particularly the ones customers suggest.

The product fit charts referred to here aren’t the types customers use to ensure their clothes fit. They’re a universal tool to use in choosing merchandise to include in a marketer’s catalog, Web site and/or stores.

‘Is This Ours to Do?’
No matter where the ideas originate, the same important question must be answered by all merchants for every product concept: Is this ours to do?

At the heart of a product fit chart is a thorough understanding of three things:

1. your brand’s positioning;

2. your brand’s merchandising concept; and

3. in-depth customer knowledge.

To create a product fit chart, you need to collaborate not only with merchants, but also with other internal brand ambassadors, such as marketers, creative folks, customer care specialists and, of course, top management. Have a strategic conversation with all these people and tackle the following subjects:

* what your brand means to your customers;

* why you are unique and different; and

* what merchandising gap your product or service is fulfilling.

Draw boundaries that complete statements such as: “Our brand is very much ______” and “Our brand is definitely not____.”

Keep drilling down on these topics until you have 10 to 15 characteristics that best describe the kinds of products that support your brand. Then capture those strategic snippets (adjectives or phrases) on one piece of paper. Be as creative as you wish in formatting this fit chart.

Product fit charts have been helpful clarifiers internally. Just the conversation that arises in creating a product fit chart opens doors and avenues that may have been closed or thought of as “sacred cows” that no longer serve the brand or your customers anymore.

In my work with the Celestial Seasonings tea catalog, it wasn’t enough to use generic words like “beverage accessories” or even “tea gifts.” Those words also could describe its top five main competitors. We needed core, brand-specific words Celestial Seasonings’ competitors wouldn’t use. (A great exercise when you’re stuck creating your own fit chart is to try to construct your competitors’ product fit charts.)

Ensure Objectives
One of the biggest challenges in creating a product fit chart is to ensure your first objectives are clear: your brand’s positioning, your merchandising concept and in-depth customer knowledge. When companies have trouble creating product fit charts, it’s because there’s ambiguity or missing links in these foundational basics.

Without a product fit chart, the answer to the question, “Is it ours to do?” can be quite subjective and open to the whim and/or personality of the merchant. While a multichannel merchant does bring a sense of personal style and gut-level intuitiveness to the choosing process, a product fit chart can keep all merchants focused on the brand’s personality and positioning.

“It doesn’t matter how a product is priced, positioned, merchandised, marketed or sold if the fit is incorrect,” points out Patagonia Director of Merchandising Kevin Churchill. “It’s an issue we’re constantly working toward improving.”

Product fit charts make merchandising more brand- and customer-centered. Jerry Knoll, a merchandising consultant with religious materials cataloger Abbey Press, says that by using product fit charts as a matrix for gift creation or discovery, “you get a strategic view of the overall plan. It’s a high-level look at the product-for-consumer connection,” he notes. “And this somewhat abstract point of view can lead to more insightful and on-target product discoveries.”

Denise Tedaldi, vice president of merchandising for food gifts cataloger Harry & David, poses part of her product fit chart in a series of questions.

* Is it exclusive?

* Does it have the right price/value relationship?

* Does it have the quality our guarantee claims?

* Would you send this to your mom, your best friend or your husband or wife?

* Does it have the OOOOH! factor?

* Finally, and most importantly in the business of selling with pictures and words, does it pass the “blink” test, where customers will know immediately by a two-second look at the picture whether it’s appealing?

These questions and others help her and her team create, edit and handpick the right products for their customers.

B-to-B marketers use fit charts as well. MCM Electronics President Phil Minix finds “a product fit chart is the most effective tool to ensure that you’re honoring your merchandise concept and focusing on what your customers know and trust you for. Without a fit chart, I’ve found it very easy for merchants and management to get caught up in an item that might sell well, but doesn’t represent what our brand stands for.”

Avoid the Wrong Direction
Over time, Minix adds, “this could actually cost you money by attracting the wrong customers that never order again, or running the risk of confusing or alienating regular customers,” he says. “It’s often not the single item that scares me as much as the direction it can take you if you then try to grow around that incongruent item or product category.”

Beyond Catalogers
Product fit charts can help more than just catalogers. “It’s helped us become more objective in how we develop merchandise,” says Ellen Kresky, director of creativity for Ben & Jerry’s. “It used to be too easy for us to allow our wildly different and wide-ranging personal opinions to come into play. We ended up with some kooky pet projects. Now the merchandise is either a good fit or it isn’t. That’s helped our team become more focused and play nicer together.”

Ben & Jerry’s uses a product fit chart to help it discern which quirky gift items are “theirs to do” as it creates a selection of brand- and customer-centric products to offer visitors to its tourist-attraction headquarters in Waterbury, Vt.

What’s more, in Scott Robinette’s book, “Emotion Marketing,” (McGraw Hill Professional, 2001) he highlights greeting card manufacturer Hallmark’s process of creating a product fit chart. As part of a leadership initiative, Robinette notes that a 20-person Hallmark team examined nearly 300 different products and generated a list of their most compelling characteristics. As a result, Hallmark’s creative staff now assesses new products — from greeting cards to home décor — against these 12 attributes of compelling products.

Conclusion
Whether the product fit chart you create becomes a creative word diagram, an acronym or a series of questions, the most important point is that you not only take the time and energy to create one that fits your brand, but that you also use it season after season and communicate its usage throughout the entire organization.

Andrea Syverson is president of IER Partners, a creative branding and merchandising consultancy in Black Forest, Colo. You can reach her at asyverson@ierpartners.com.

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