Merchandising: Don’t Be Boring

6. Learn from the small giants. The small giants in our industry are those who do things differently, who are passionate about their customers and because of all that, are gaining more than just their partial attention.

Many small giants are found outside your market segment. Medved acknowledges the importance of looking outside your existing vertical market for that “wow” idea. He recounts the following story from his time leading Walter Drake: “We had a product that was a minimal seller; a small shot-glass sized measuring cup. It customarily sold a few hundred units. I was attending a health care show and saw that same product being used to measure liquid medicines. We reshot the glass for the next catalog and talked about how easy it was to measure medicine this way vs. using messy spoons. We ended up selling thousands rather than hundreds. But we would have never uncovered this product usage if we had not stepped outside our traditional show path.”