Welcome to Retail Basics: Merchandising and Store Conditioning, created by the National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA).

NCGA specifically designed this workbook to support effective merchandising in your food co-op and to enhance the customer experience using tools and practices that support retail excellence. Through this handbook, you will gain professional knowledge on:

• How shoppers see your co-op
• Components of effective merchandising
• Specific tactics in merchandising
• Enhanced visual orientation to your co-op and specific departments n Tools to improve store conditioning
• How others approach merchandising and store conditioning
• Creating a specific improvement plan

We offer this workbook in an effort to explore the unique aspects of merchandising and store conditioning in a co-op setting. When the customers own the store, this changes the focus and purpose of many retail practices. No longer is it our aim to simply sell more and more to customers regardless of the quality of the product or the shopper’s need. When our customers are also member/owners, merchandising carries a different focus. This workbook draws upon standard industry practices, with some sensitivity to their unique application within the co-op environment.

This workbook is designed to supplement NCGA’s Retail Basics (RB) training program. Retail Basics provides professional development and training about grocery retailing to co-op managers, focused primarily at the department manager level. The core RB curriculum gives managers fluency in the basics of retail operations to enhance their skills and performance. Retail Basics 101 is the first of a three-part training program; RB 102 focuses on managing key department indicators, and RB 103 examines supervision and team building.

NCGA is a business services cooperative for U.S. food co-ops. NCGA helps unify food co-ops to optimize operational and marketing resources, strengthen purchasing power, and ultimately offer more value to food co-op owners and shoppers everywhere.