All about Merchandsising

1. MERCHANDISING AND ITS TYPE
An old French word Merchandising means to sell products (merchandise-product) to the retail
consumers or customers. On the contrary, in the store level, variety of products available to ready
for sale and display of those products in such way that stimulate interest of the buyers and
induces customers to purchase.
From the definition of trade & commerce, visual merchandising means to display the products
using product design, sampling, packaging, pricing, and display in an artistic way to spend more
by the customers. As design and display are the arts of merchandising these are very essential
part of it for the fruitful merchandising.
Different types of Merchandising:
 Fashion Merchandising: The type of Merchandising which is related with trend of the
products and subjected to the following issues:
 Seek out the latest trends
 Keep tabs on the fashion world
 Master accounting skills
 Examine different cultures
 Study the history of fashion
 Learn about fabrics and textiles
 Visual Merchandising: The art of display or presentation the goods or products by
which customers will lure to purchase (the goods) is called Visual Merchandising in
simple. Goods display in the windows of shops or in mannequins or dummies or some
time in live models or celebrities or in the road shows. This type of Merchandising is
different in various cultures and tradition or sometime the types of the customers. For
example, people in the beach will not purchase suit rather they will purchase some short
bottoms or bikinis.
 Apparel Merchandising: Apparel Merchandising is in fact to bring the orders by using
different marketing tools, arranging raw materials according to buyer’s demand,
producing goods with quality standard or buyer code of conduct, in a specified time with
a strong follow up, ship out the goods and receiving the payments. After completing
everything, with a good coordination and communication, closing the order file and
starting the marketing activity again.
 Supply Chain Merchandising: Its very recent concept after the development of
merchandising worldwide. The practice of making products in retail outlets available to
customers, primarily by keeping shelves and displays. Sometime this all arrangement is
done by the suppliers when the retailer can save his money from his employee’s salary as
less numbers of workers are needed for the job. For example, in the United Kingdom
there are a number of organizations that supply merchandising services to support retail

2. outlets with general stock refill and merchandising support in new stores. By doing this,
retail stores have been able to significantly reduce the number of employees needed to
run the store.
 Factory Merchandising or Production Merchandising : By communication and
extreme coordination the merchandising personnel’s with the people for production
create design(sometimes), make pattern and marker and finally produce the products as
per the instructions of the buyers with supplied or collected raw materials. Factory
Merchandising is somewhat different from other types of Merchandising while it is
difficult without having a good grip or strong management.
 Special type of Merchandising (in case of Bangladesh): Bangladesh is the country where
logistics support is lacking from the supply chain part of Merchandising as there are
working many constraints. Buyers nominating supply chain is not sometimes working very
slow and occasionally is not friendly with the merchandising people. On the other hand,
for all type of supports, factory management claims merchandisers always. Its miracle that
factory people think all the works are merchandisers! The working relation with
Merchandisers to others are not friendly here.