If you’re trying to get your product to stand out on supermarket shelves, or even the shelves of your local retail or special goods store, you know how hard it can be. Your product is just one of the hundreds lining the shelves, and customers aren’t necessarily going to be inclined to choose any one good over another, especially if they aren’t aware your brand exists. This goes double if you happen to work in the fashion industry: even if your product is revolutionizing the industry, solving problems that big fashion companies either haven’t tried to address or haven’t been able to for decades, if your customers wouldn’t pick your clothing over cheaper varieties available in retail stores, you’re stuck. 

Yes, with the market being largely dominated by big brands and suffocated, to a point, by the glut of smaller ones trying to make it, it can be next to impossible to make sure your products have the best chance when you put them on the market. However, there are some simple tips and tricks you can use to make sure that, when customers go looking for an item or a product that fits within your niche, you are one of the first things they see: and you leave such an impact on the customer that they have to pick your product up to try it out, see if they like it. 

If you’ve worked retail before, you may be familiar with some of the tips listed below. Regardless, for fashion designers who are trying to make their product the top dog in the market, read on for basic tips that will help customers, when browsing the myriad of products available in outlets, choose yours. 

Location is Everything

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, one that is common knowledge in every retail store that has ever existed: if you want to push a certain volume of a particular product, you have to be smart about where it’s located in-store. Different products have different ideal product placements, from “Little Debbie ” snack cakes and energy drinks being best positioned near checkout to having specially branded grocery goods sitting on end caps all their own.

For your purposes, you’ll want to be put front and center in your store’s local clothing section, either the first rack or on a table all your own. The same goes in any other kind of store, from Bloomingdales to Macy’s: the closer you are to the front, the more likely it is that your clothing is noticed and picked up by customers. The more they have to dig to find your brand, the less likely it is that you’ll pick up customers that didn’t know you existed before. 

Packaging, Packaging, Packaging

Another factor that has been known to come into play is how your product is packaged: bold colors, shiny packaging, all things that catch customers’ eyes. And that works just fine for grocery items, toys, and the like, but we’re dealing with fashion here, so we’ll need to take a different approach.

You can always plan to release a couple of designs with eye-catching colors to catch customers’ attention and direct them over to your section with all of your products. However, you can also employ techniques like adding custom-branded hang tags by Wunderlabel to give your clothing’s “packaging” an extra, eye-catching, personal touch. 

Stay Abreast of Current Trends

When in the design stage, you’ll want to be aware of how the pandemic has affected fashion trends, as while some of the same rules apply, people buy and use clothing for different functions than they did a few years ago. With fewer of us able to go out often and very few of us getting to see friends or family members, our expectations for our clothing have also likewise changed: even with things opening up and with vaccinations becoming more available, those changes haven’t gone away, so you may want to include some pandemic friendly designs in your first round of releases. 

Even with a fantastic product, standing out on store shelves takes strategy, both before and while your clothes are on racks. Take the proper steps, however, and you’ll find you accrue new customers with shocking regularity.