While we wait for the Government to decide how they wish to proceed with tobacco control legislation retailer like ourselves still need to focus on the category. We have recently been asked to stock two additional lines by customers, Marlboro Silver and Pall Mall Superkings.

To enable an adequate display of these new lines we decided to refresh the display of the whole gantry. Our starting point as always with questions of merchandising was to look at the sales data that our EPoS system provides.

Not unexpectedly the data revealed that the top 5 products are our most important lines, in fact Marlboro Gold 20’s is worth 5 times Embassy No 1 (our 20th best seller). We have 95 facings of either tobacco, cigarettes or cigars so relating space to the proportion of profit delivered by each line I was able to decide how many facing we should give each line.

The photograph shows that our best sellers are focused round the centre of the gantry with tobacco vertically displayed down one side. Our cigarette sales are still weighted towards the full margin brands so the low margin brands have been placed mainly below or above the eye line shelves.

This exercise certainly has improved the look of the display, now we will discover what it does for sales.