Sarah H. Rogers
Winning the Aisle
Walmart, Ravenswood, Merrick
Three clients, three categories · Shelf and in-store activation
THE CHALLENGE
Different clients, different categories — wireless, wine, pet food — same fight: winning finite shelf space in a crowded aisle where the retailer decides who gets prime real estate and who gets pushed to the bottom shelf.
THE WORK
Walmart: Cricket in-aisle
Wireless is a strange category to shop: it's a deeply personal purchase, and shoppers are stubbornly loyal to whatever carrier they already have. Add wall-to-wall parity — every major carrier runs at least one discount sub-brand in that same fixture, sometimes half a dozen competing for the same few feet of shelf — and most people just shut down and grab whatever's familiar. The fix was to build the creative the way people actually shop wireless — phone first, plan second. The top of the fixture became a billboard for the device promo, rate plan messaging dropped to shelf level, and the product itself sat last, right where the decision actually gets made. But the competitive landscape here never sits still — every refresh means checking what's changed on the shelf next to it and making sure Cricket still stands out.
In-aisle signage can carry a headline, not a full decision, and Walmart's purchase-path rules meant we couldn't point shoppers off Walmart.com the way Cricket's own Explorer+ tool does in Cricket's own stores and events. I identified that gap, then planned and wireframed a coverage and plan comparison tool built specifically for it, accessed by scanning a QR code built into the aisle signage itself — one continuous experience, not a separate destination. Shoppers enter a zip code to see real coverage and compare rate plans and extras, informational only with no path to purchase, so it stayed inside Walmart's rules. It's also fully bilingual — the one part of this experience built to reach Spanish-speaking shoppers, since the signage itself isn't. I worked with UX and development through build, testing, and deployment.
Walmart's response was direct and measurable: within a year, Cricket was upgraded to the premium row facing the electronics department, with more four-column facings and fewer one- and two-column spaces — the retailer voting with shelf space, which is the only vote that actually matters in that business. Cricket keeps investing in refreshed in-aisle creative to build on that momentum, which is its own kind of proof — clients don't keep funding what isn't working. And the comparison tool has drawn steady monthly traffic since launch — proof shoppers are actually using it, not just scanning once and bouncing.
Mid-price wine is one of the most crowded categories in the store, and the ask is always the same: more space, more standout. Instead of leaning on the brand's whimsy alone, we built an actual solution for the shopper — a knitted scarf display around the holidays that doubled as a way to hold a card or gift card, so the bottle became the whole gift. No wrapping paper, no extra trip. We backed it up with a modular case display — built to work across multiple footprints and flex to any retailer — that gave the gifting idea real presence on the shelf, not just at the holiday scarf moment. And because it was a gift, it put Ravenswood in front of people who weren't already buying the brand — friends and family on the receiving end.
Retailers liked it because it drove gift card sales; shoppers liked it because it solved a real problem. No formal sales data was tracked, but the signal was real — stores kept the program because it moved gift cards, and shoppers kept buying it because it solved an actual problem at checkout.
Ravenswood Wine Store Solution: Walmart, Kroger, ALC/Bev Stores
A Gifting Solution, Not Just a Display
Merrick — Building the "Pet Parent" Shop-in-Shop
One of the earlier examples on this list, but it set a trend that's still running today: brands building their own branded zones inside big-box stores instead of settling for standard shelf space. The design had to be modular enough to work in any big-box footprint, and the core idea was treating pet owners like parents shopping for their kids — turning a pet food aisle into a small education-and-experience moment inside stores like Walmart and Target, well before "pet parent" was a retail category anyone talked about.
The client used this as the sell-in to secure more space, and the "pet parent" framing it introduced became a category-wide shopper trend that retail is still building around today.
