Jerry

How time flies!! A month fraut with store relays (and re relays), running around sourcing props and a weeks leave levered in at the end to unwind a bit, but also do the million and one things that needed to be done around the house.

Anyway, Jerry.....? Jerry was a trainee I had way back in Jet Eloff Street, when Jet still did windows and not those bland 'big-poster-ad-and-an-unnesesary-pile of-merchandise-next-to-it' things they do these days. Jerry was keen, worked hard/played hard as I suppose we all did. The only thing I battled to get him to do right was merchandise selection. Though main windows featured advertised lines as close to the pictured items as possible there were always inbetween times to take care of. Also at that store, we had more than enough window space to go beyond the advertised lines. Jerry seemed to battle co-ordinating colour,ending up with mismatched clothing across the window front.When this happened on preplanned advertised stock I began to realise that Jerry was perhaps colourblind. It just meant that one of us would check the merchandise before it was steamed and prepped.



The point of this reflection on past days is I think I know what's happened to Truworths windows over the last few years....Jerry's working there!! I must admit that I have been out of mainstream visual merchanding in any capacity but as an observer for a while now, but I have always thought that colour co-ordination was one of the main tenets of a good presentation - did that change?






Also, for fun I thought I'd snap some windows away from the big sparkly malls. The headless Truworths model presentation above was from the shopping centre in Brixton, the other two from a large mall in Kempton Park - better models but still not a patch on what you'd find in, say, Sandton or Canal Walk.



However, from upper class to middle of the road and down, all the windows were clinically tidy, well lit and similarly propped.
Also snapped, a new theme from Truworths - shipping/camoflague? (all a bit close to the present political climate methinks ;-p)



Whilst in Kempton Park I noticed the Edgars mens theme, I suppose unuaual in that many Edgars stores I see these days have little or no window space (reminds self-must get down to see Edgars revamped Cresta store) -but a pretty bland presentation anyway. (Aside,Edgars was one of the stores I used to regularly check for innovation and high standards - used to...)





One from Foschinni - subtle use of the red used to emphasis the cancer awareness campaign, though perhaps the round cancer sign could've been better positioned. I find the window nice, tight and crisp.