Making P.O.P. Displays

You can't always count on your vendors to provide you with exactly the point-of-purchase (POP) displays that you want. You know what POP displays do. They make your products look attractive so that customers, while waiting for their photos, will pick up the product and buy it. The right displays look good, answer the most basic questions, and drive impulse sales.

And YOU can make the best displays for your store! Who else knows more about your product selection, and who else has access to all the great tools in a camera store/minilab?

Simple steps to make a POP Display:

• Print a sign using your best color printer. (That's probably the $200,000 digital minilab you're paying for)
• Fasten the sign to a piece of mat board or foam core, using ATG tape
• Make an easel so it stands up, or fasten it to an existing display easel
• Fasten a 3-dimensional object to the panel using ATG tape.
• Fill the display with product

Our in-store display holds a stack of the CD-Roms and shows the coupons that come with it. It was made from a book-display easel. The sign itself was printed on our PictroStat and mounted on black mat board with ATG tape. I fastened on a CD that failed our rigorous quality control (because I put the label on the wrong side!)

I make a lot of POP signs using the same techniques. Let's step through a very simple one:

First I printed an 8"x10" sign using Photo Shop. This one shows the difference between glossy paper and matte paper, and also shows prints with and without borders. (click on image to see it in greater detail)

I had some scrap pieces of black foam core board lying around the shop from previous projects. I cut one just a fraction larger than the sign. From a strip about 2" wide I made an easel to prop up the sign. No exact dimensions, just a few bends and ATG tape to hold it all together.

Here's the ATG gun being used to put a line of adhesive on one of the photos, which is then slapped onto the 8"x10" sign.

What is ATG tape? ATG stands for Adhesive Transfer Gun, and it's my favorite tool in the store! Think of it as double-stick tape without the tape. It's 3M's system to lay down just as much adhesive as you want, exactly where you want it. Framers use it to put the paper on the back of picture frames and I use it everyplace you want to stick one thing to another. For example, when I make my digital single-use cameras it fastens the card to the camera box.

If you're a framer, you've already got one and you know where to buy more. If you're not a framer, we sell ATG guns.