How it works
 
Creating a Plan
Our custom display development begins as an exercise in gathering pertinent information.   We send you our standard questionnaire which we ask you to fill out.  The questions are targeted at key points that must be understood before we can have an intelligent discussion about what kind of display might meet your needs.  Many of our clients are new to the display world and this questionnaire is a great tool to help them develop their wholesale programs.  The questions are about the sizes of your products, packaging, target demographic etc...  The questionnaire acts as a map with which we navigate the possibilities for your display.  After reviewing the questionnaire, we set up a free initial consultation to go over some ideas that might work best to meet all of your objectives.  This consultation is at no cost to you and even if you are not quite ready to develop a program, the consultation can help you to understand your options going forward. 
 
The Design Process
After the consultation, if you are interested in moving forward with the concept development, we will send you a contract/proposal for our design services.  We charge a reasonable set fee to design a display concept.  We ask for 50% up front and the balance after you have seen the final rendering.   This price includes a photorealistic rendering and dimensioned CAD drawings.  We ask to receive one each of the products that you wish to display, so that we can model them accurately and get the actual look and feel of the packaging.  We will go over the ideas together before any work is done.  After we have agreed on the general idea, we will create a preliminary drawing to submit to you for review.  You will suggest any changes you would like to see and we make the changes.  After the changes, the model is submitted to you again and you repeat with any further changes.  Throughout the process, you guide the direction of the design.  Once we hit your mark, we will create a photorealistic rendering of your display with your products loaded onto it.  You can use this image in your sell sheets to pre-sell the display program to your retailers.  At this point in the process, you can continue to market the program until you get enough customers on board to justify a production order, or you can place a production order ahead of time.
 
Price Point
One of the questions on the questionnaire is about your price point, or the price you have budgeted for your display.  This is a very critical piece of information, because we want to design something that meets all of your objectives, and price point being paramount.  Many people don't know what their price point should be, they just know they want it to be as low as possible.  Though we all want everything to be as low cost as possible, this is not necessarily the best strategy when creating a custom display.  The most intelligent way to figure out your price point is to bundle your products in such a way as to make the program profitable from the very beginning.  With permanent displays, you will see several turns a year on your display, so the first buy in may not be a hefty profit, but it will ensure placement and the re-orders will be very profitable.  Some wholesalers offer the display for free with a bundled buy in.  Many wholesalers offer programs that allow the retailers to purchase the display outright or they offer the display at a discounted price with a particular buy in. 
 
Completion
Once your display concept is created in the form of a 3D rendering, you have everything you need to proceed to the prototype phase or to market your display program.  When you are ready to see your display in its physical form, we can take you into the prototype phase, which you can read about in the Manufacturing and Project Management page.