Big Picture - August 2019 - 12

73%
The percent of surveyed wide-format firms that said their top priority is finding
new customers.
Source: ISA White Paper: Sales Best Practices for Wide Format Providers

We Have the Meat
One shop's solution for a retail dilemma.

BIG PICTURE

August 2019

BY TOM RADZ, marketing specialist for azpro

There's an old saying in retail, "Eye level is buy level."
It's a pretty simple theory, supported by numerous studies,
that a customer is more likely to purchase products that are
positioned closer to their eyes, rather than the ones placed on
lower shelves. This is the concept behind the placement of
headers at grocery stores.
Headers are the spaces set aside for advertising at the
top of the meat, dairy, liquor, and produce cases. Positioned
at eye-level, they provide the consumer with product
information, sale prices, or wayfinding. They are often a
beacon for the shopper who is searching for their ritual
T-bone steak on game day, or the busy parent looking for a
grab-and-go meal after work.
While consumers clearly benefit from the presence of a
header, they may also be tempted to participate in an impulse
buy. In-store advertising can contribute to the atmosphere of
the store. Taking all of this into consideration, headers are an
effective way to enhance the overall shopping experience.
The invaluable real estate at the top of these cases
recently became a focus for azpro, a large-format printing
company in Avondale, Arizona, when we were tasked by one
of our largest clients to overhaul the headers in their meat
department. Fry's Food Stores, a subsidiary of Kroger, was
looking for a way to make these spaces more easily changeable and more aesthetically appealing to shoppers.
"On our end, we had to create different sized headers,
depending on the store," says Leon Klepin, azpro quality and
efficiency expert. "So, Fry's asked us for a consistent way to
change out advertising pricing for what's in their cases in the
meat department. They wanted it to be company-wide and
consistent per store."
The original headers at Fry's were uneven, angled surfaces
that didn't work well with the graphics that belonged there.
Vinyl signage, which often had to be produced in different
sizes depending on the case, was applied to the header base
with an adhesive backing. This not only created a challenge
on the production end, but it was also time consuming when
installing and removing them from the cases.

Fry's approached Jason Prenovost, azpro founder,
co-owner, and president, who enlisted Klepin to help
design a new solution. Prenovost and Klepin decided that
the best route was to install an entirely new housing
system to the tops of the cases. They began by attaching
mounting brackets to a piece of 1/4-inch, black PVC that
had small grooves at the top and bottom. This allowed for
the headers to be easily installed and replaced merely by
sliding the printed graphics in and out in seconds.
Graphics are printed on an EFI Vutek HS 125 Pro and cut
with a Zünd cutter.
"This will make updates to headers in the future much
easier to replace. It saves us from having to re-skin or
re-paint in the event of a signage update," says Dawn
Baker, meat and seafood merchandiser for Fry's. "Department heads and store management really like and appreciate the change. It makes for a very clean and uniform look
to the meat department."
The program is currently limited to the meat department in all of Fry's locations, but Baker says there is
potential for the new header housings to be installed on
similar cases in the produce, dairy, and liquor departments.
At the end of the day, this small innovation provides a
better shopping experience, simplifies production, and
offers a more cost-effective process for our client - who
can now change out their graphics by themselves.
"The new headers enable our clients to handle graphic
changeovers at the store level. Changing out the graphics
is also more cost-effective, so they can update the
campaigns more frequently," Prenovost adds.

Big Picture - August 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Big Picture - August 2019