Share this
by Surefront on Apr 17, 2025 12:07:30 PM
The Complete Guide to Visual Buying & Merchandising: Chapter 1 (3rd Edition)
Table of Contents
- Why We Need a New Way to Buy
- The Disconnect Between Vision and Data
- Why Spreadsheets Break the Buying Process
- The Mental Gymnastics Behind Every Process
- Visual Merchandising Isn't Just for Stores Anymore
- Empower Buyers with the Right Tools
- Further Reading
Why We Need a New Way to Buy
Retail buying has always been a visual job. Buyers live in a world of silhouettes, textures, colors, and trends. From fabric samples to vendor showrooms to trade show floors, they make decisions with their eyes before anything hits a spreadsheet.
But something strange happens after the purchase order is written. Those visual decisions so intuitive in person get stripped down into sterile spreadsheets and fragmented emails. And suddenly, the rich visual logic behind a buy is lost in a sea of text.
The Disconnect Between Vision and Data
Here’s the irony: The better a buyer is at visual thinking, the harder it becomes to translate that thought process into a system built for accountants. Product details become rows in Excel. Images are stored somewhere else (if at all). Context is lost.
According to neuroscience, the parts of the brain that process imagery and those that process data are completely separate. That means when a buyer tries to analyze performance without visual cues, they’re flying blind.
The result? Missed reorders, fuzzy hindsight, and too much time wasted trying to remember what “Product 0924-BLK-DNM” actually looked like.
“We’re visual people, and so visual information is very powerful.” – DMM, Regional Fashion Retailer
Why Spreadsheets Break the Buying Process
Most tools buyers use were built for someone else - finance teams, operations, maybe planning. But not buyers.
Let’s face it: Excel doesn’t show you how a product feels. It doesn’t help you remember what shade of pink that hoodie was. And it definitely doesn’t support instinctive decisions made on a trade show floor.
Instead, buyers spend hours digging through tabs and filters, hoping the data tells them what their gut already knows. Some even print out images to attach to sales reports. Others scroll e-commerce sites to refresh their memory.
That’s not just inefficient - it’s a system failure.
The Mental Gymnastics Behind Every Purchase
Every retail buyer is performing mental gymnastics every week:
- Recalling the visual context of hundreds of SKUs
- Juggling incomplete attribute data from multiple vendors
- Reconstructing decisions from memory weeks or months later
And when a buyer moves into a new category? It’s like solving a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.
Even if the product attributes are technically correct, the nuance - the why behind the buy - is gone.
Buyers aren’t just looking at data. They’re asking:
“How did this pattern perform last spring?”
“Was this the oversized silhouette or the standard fit?”
“Is this the fabric that bled color during testing?”
These are the questions spreadsheets can’t answer.
Visual Merchandising Isn’t Just for Stores Anymore
We’ve long thought of visual merchandising as something done after the product hits the floor. But that thinking is outdated.
Today’s most effective buyers use visual merchandising throughout the entire product lifecycle - from assortment planning to vendor negotiations to seasonal hindsight.
When images and data live together, buyers can:
- Slice and dice assortments with visual reference
- Spot performance patterns at a glance
- Make smarter decisions in meetings and on the go
Brands like IKEA, Adidas, and Unilever have also embraced systems that tie visual data to performance insights. And the results speak for themselves: faster development cycles, better alignment across teams, and fewer missed opportunities.
We’ve long thought of visual merchandising as something done after the product hits the floor. But that thinking is outdated.
Today’s most effective buyers use visual merchandising throughout the entire product lifecycle - from assortment planning to vendor negotiations to seasonal hindsight. When images and data live together, buyers can:
- Slice and dice assortments with visual reference
- Spot performance patterns at a glance
- Make smarter decisions in meetings and on the go
Brands like IKEA, Adidas, and Unilever have already embraced systems that tie visual data to performance insights. And the results speak for themselves: faster development cycles, better alignment across teams, and fewer missed opportunities.
Empowering Buyers with the Right Tools
The goal isn’t to replace the buyer’s instinct - it’s to support it. We need tools that combine both sides of the brain: the art and the science.
Visual merchandising tools should help buyers:
- Recall product context in seconds
- Review past decisions quickly
- Compare assortments side-by-side
- Build smarter, faster, and with more confidence
Because when buyers are equipped with tools that speak their language, they don’t just buy better - they buy smarter.
And that’s what transforms good retail into great retail.
References
- Retailing Education The Importance of Visual Merchandising in Competitive Retail
- Feedough What is Visual Merchandising
- Harvard Business Review (2024) How to Lead Across a Siloed Organization
- MIT Sloan (2023) 5 Supply Chain Technologies That Deliver Competitive Advantage
- Forbes (2024) The AI-Enabled Future of Retail: Driving Innovation
Book a custom demo and explore how you can streamline your entire assortment planning and merchandising process.
Further Reading
Transforming Your Catalog with PIM
The Ultimate Guide to a Perfect Line Sheet
How to Choose and Implement the Best PLM Software
Tech Pack Templates That Drive Product Development
Transforming the Retail Buyer’s Workflow with a Visual-First Platform
The Complete Guide to Visual Merchandising & Assortment Planning
