I See a Gondola. Impulse Speed, Engsin. We Are Off to the Races!

News in photography from : How to take “Panasonic” pictures.

From The drama with tandems, gondolas and POGs in Sears.

Now, store display, design and marketing always fascinated me. So I did a bit of digging around:

Apparently this is a gondola (the long shelves) with end caps :
(from http://www.leggettsfg.com/)

Tandems seem to be Sears specific type of shelving. I wonder, who invented gondola shelves and why made that person name them so.

I found Glossary of Aftermarket Terms and dug this stuff up:

SKU: Stock Keeping Unit. Refers to each single item carried by a retailer. Every color, style and item having its own vendor or vendee number has its own SKU.
Keystone: A markup of 100% or more.
Loss Leader: A high-demand product such as motor oil or spark plugs, sold at cost or below to draw customers into a store.
Velocity Price: Pricing system based on relative movement within a product line (usually discounting faster moving items more deeply than slower movers).
Ad Slicks: Black and white reproducible artwork used for packaging and advertising.

When I was working on online stores, I once asked in a meeting what SKU stood for. Interestingly enough nobody knew the correct answer. I looked it up on the Net later.

You know those strings of items that festoon the shelves that we now know are called gondolas?
(image from http://www.hubert.com)

Apparently those are called “impulse strips”. When will they come up with warp strips?

Now, this is an interesting name for a suprmarket layout:
(taken from http://www.discountshelving.com)
(Illustration 1) Racetrack Layout
Racetrack Layout consists of a main aisle that will lead customers from the front area, around the whole store, and leads them at the check out counter. It is designed for two-way traffic that directs customers to what they are looking for.