Careful with Those Dollar Merchandise Aisle Displays

One of the most exciting things about owning a dollar store is living the experience of so much dollar merchandise flying through your store each day.  Merchandise seems to literally disappear, it sell so quickly.  And of course your response to all of the sales is to order lots of replenishment items to keep the shelves filled to the brim.  There are times when it just seems logical to forget the end caps and aisle shelves and simply stack the incoming merchandise right in the aisles of your store.  In this article I examine some of the benefits associated with this strategy.

Most of the benefits associated with stacking boxes of a single item in the aisle are very straight forward.  For many of those who own a dollar store they make perfect sense.   Just some of the potential benefits include:

    Greater head-on exposure – as shoppers move down the aisle, they run right into a huge stack of products still in their original boxes.  It would be hard to make dollar merchandise more obvious and visible to your shoppers.


    Much less labor required – all it takes is a box cutter and in seconds a box can be opened and shoppers are able to easily remove as many of the cartons or boxes of the items inside as they wish.


    Perfect location for extra dollar merchandise – strategically placing a stack of boxes of a single item which doesn’t fit on the display shelves is one way to eliminate the need to place the boxes in the stockroom and then locate, pull and unpack them as space becomes available on the sales floor.


    Perfect location for high-demand or seasonal items – what better way to insure shoppers see the items they definitely want than to have them stacked in the aisles of your store.  Whether it is a stack of boxes of favorite holiday candies, or facial tissue during back to school or the flu season, your shoppers want these items and will easily locate them using this strategy.



While the list of potential benefits is impressive indeed, do not forget to examine the downsides associated with stacking boxes in the aisles of your dollar store.  For example, they do create an inviting mountain for small children to attempt to scale.  As the tall stack begins to sell down, there is also the risk of a customer accidentally tripping over the short stack of remaining boxes.