Merchandising Musings
By Andrea Syverson
About Andrea
Andrea Syverson is a customer-centric listener, connector and creator. As a right and left-brained creative marketing strategist with over 20 years experience, she holds customers in highest regard in all decision-making processes. By actively and intuitively listening to customers, she's created and developed best-selling products across a variety of categories, from gifts and stationery to books to gourmet food to apparel to spirituality, and many in between.
Her clients include large and small companies: Hallmark, Hershey Foods, Ben & Jerry’s, Celestial Seasonings, Wolferman’s and Boston Proper, just to name a few. While she holds an MBA, Andrea acknowledges that her true expertise comes from continuous hands-on customer experiences. Her new book, "BrandAbout: A Seriously Playful Playbook for Passionate Brand-Builders and Merchants," will be out in spring 2010. She's president of IER Partners, a national consulting firm specializing in strategic planning, brand marketing, merchandising, new product development and creative thinking.
Creating Positive Customer Experiences
The Value of Pouring It On
Jul 19, 2010What if you were able to use the energy of really caring? What if in the workplace you could consistently...
Return on Intelligence
What You Can Learn From the Way Old-School Retailers Do Business
Jul 19, 2010There's a lot to be learned from your old-school retailer. From trial and error, I've learned and hopefully taught the...
A Love Affair With Merchandising
I love synthesizing all that knowledge into innovative new concepts. I love strengthening existing products to make them better, simpler and/or easier for customers to integrate into their lives. I love seeing the “WOW!” factor light up a customer’s eyes when a product ends up exactly fitting the bill. I love creating more of those kinds of products and editing out the ones customers don’t respond to. Plain and simple, I love all aspects of merchandising.
I’ve been a merchant for more than 20 years and have created products for almost every customer segment — from babies to teens to seniors and all in between — category — gift, food, apparel, inspirational, publishing and social expression, to name a few — and price point, from low-end to luxury. The disciplines remain the same.
I follow Harvard professor Clayton Christensen’s axiom as my merchandising golden rule: “A product has a job to do for your customer.” I also add to that: “A product has a job to do for your brand.” These guiding factors play out in all the best merchandising strategies. Customer-centric products have only two paths — they can either enhance or detract from the brand.
I also love words. In this blog, I'll be sharing examples of how the right products become action verbs in support of their brands. Using an ensemble of verbs from A to Z, I'll be looking at numerous product examples from across many industries to showcase the vitality of the signals that products broadcast for their brands.
Merchandising isn't a neutral business function! Stay tuned and see what lessons your brand can learn from wordsmithing your product line.
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