POP Displays in New York

Velement designs, prototypes and manufactures point-of-purchase displays in acrylic, metal, wood and print. Built in our own workshop, finished to your brand specification, and packed so the store can put them out without calling anyone.

Countertop units, floor stands, endcaps and shelf systems, from a single flagship piece to a rollout across hundreds of stores. Semi-permanent and permanent construction.

Send Us the Brief

The display has three jobs, and only one of them is selling

Everybody knows what a point-of-purchase display is for. It interrupts a shopper who was walking past, holds the product where a hand can reach it, and makes a case for buying now rather than later. That part is well understood and it is what most display pages spend their words on.

What actually decides whether a display works is the two jobs nobody writes about. It has to be accepted by the retailer, which usually means meeting a published specification on footprint, height, weight and materials. And it has to get from a warehouse to a shop floor, through a delivery, a stockroom and a store associate with five minutes and no tools, and still look like the rendering.

A display that sells brilliantly and fails either of those is a display that sits flat-packed behind the stockroom door. We design for all three, in that order: accepted, built, then persuasive.

Where it sits decides what it is

Position in the store determines the footprint, the height, the construction and usually the retailer specification. It is the first thing to settle, and it is normally set by the retail negotiation rather than by the design.

Type	Where it goes	Typical construction	What constrains it
Countertop unit	Beside the register or on a service counter.	Acrylic, formed metal or a combination. Small, heavy enough not to walk.	Counter space is the most contested real estate in the store. Footprint is measured in inches and the retailer will enforce it.
Floor stand	Aisle ends, open floor, entrance zones.	Metal or wood frame with printed panels, or heavy-gauge acrylic.	Stability. A floor unit has to survive being leaned on, hit by a cart and loaded unevenly.
Endcap display	The end of an aisle, the highest-value position in most stores.	Built to the retailer’s fixture dimensions, often as a facing and header rather than a free unit.	The footprint is fixed by the retailer’s own gondola. There is no negotiating a quarter inch.
Shelf systems and trays	On the retailer’s own shelving.	Formed acrylic, injection or fabricated trays, pushers and dividers.	It has to fit an existing shelf pitch and depth, which varies by retailer and sometimes by store.
Inline and sidekick units	Hung from or fixed to existing shelving, beside the main facing.	Light fabricated metal, acrylic or board.	Weight and fixing method. It is attached to somebody else’s fixture.
Feature and flagship pieces	Brand spaces, concessions, flagship stores.	Anything. This is where the workshop earns its keep.	Usually nothing but budget and the installation window.

The display has to be accepted before it can sell anything

This is the step that catches brands out. A display is going into somebody else’s store, and most major retailers publish specifications governing what they will accept. Typically that covers footprint and height, weight and stability, materials and finish, how the unit attaches to or stands clear of existing fixtures, and how it is delivered and disposed of. Some require approval of a sample before a rollout is authorized.

None of that is negotiable at the point of delivery. A unit that is an inch too wide for the gondola does not get a variance; it gets sent back, and the campaign starts late.

What we need from you. Send us the retailer specification with the brief, or tell us which retailer and which position and we will ask for it.
What we do with it. We design to the specification from the start rather than designing first and checking afterwards, and we build the approval sample the retailer will want to see.
What happens if it does not fit? If the brief and the specification conflict, we tell you before anything is made, not after.

The display has to survive the journey and the stockroom

A display is handled by a packer, a carrier, a delivery driver, a stockroom and a store associate before a single shopper sees it. Most of what goes wrong with POP goes wrong in that sequence rather than in the design.

Decision	Options	Why it matters
Assembled or flat	Shipped, built, or knocked down for assembly in store.	Built ships are better-looking and cost more to freight. Flat ships cheaply and depends entirely on the assembly being genuinely simple.
Assembly method	Tool-free, or hardware supplied.	A display that needs tools is a display that does not get built. If hardware is unavoidable, it ships attached to the part it belongs to.
Instructions	Printed sheet, or printed inside the carton lid.	Inside the lid, every time. Loose sheets are thrown away with the packaging before anyone reads them.
Part identification	Unnumbered, or numbered and labeled.	Numbered parts turn a puzzle into a sequence. It costs almost nothing and it is the difference between five minutes and forty.
Carton and protection	Single unit, multi-pack, or palletized.	Decided by how it ships and who receives it. A distributor and two hundred individual stores are different problems.
Spares	None, or a small over-run.	Something always arrives damaged. A five percent over-run is cheaper than a reprint and a courier.

Fifty units and five hundred are different projects

POP is the one category where quantity genuinely changes how the thing is made, and a buyer who does not know that gets a surprise in the quote.

Quantity	How it is usually made	What drives the cost
One to ten	Fully fabricated, individually finished, effectively bespoke.	Labor and design. There is nothing to amortize.
Ten to a hundred	Repeat fabrication against an approved prototype, batched through the shop.	The prototype and the setup, spread across the run. This is where the per-unit price falls fastest.
A hundred plus	Production runs, jigs and tooling where they pay for themselves, and a packaging and distribution plan.	Tooling, materials and logistics rather than labor.

Tell us the quantity at the first conversation, even approximately. It changes the design, not just the price: a component that is sensible at ten units can be the wrong approach entirely at three hundred, and finding that out after the design is approved wastes everybody’s time.

From brief to store-ready

Brief. The product, the retailer, the position in store, the quantity and the date. Plus the retailer specification if you have it, and the brand guidelines.
Concept and design. We design to the specification and the position, and show you the unit with the actual product on it rather than as an empty shell.
Prototype. One unit, built properly, for you to look at, load with product, and send to the retailer for approval if they need it. Nothing goes into production before this is signed off.
Specification and pack-out. Materials, construction, finishes, pack-out and assembly method, agreed together.
Production. Built in our workshop against the approved prototype, checked as a batch rather than as individual units.
Pack and ship. Packed, labeled and shipped to your distributor, your warehouse or direct to store.

A display manufacturer, not a display printer

Capability	What it means for the program
We fabricate	Acrylic, metal and wood in our own workshop, so a display can be built rather than assembled from printed board and hope.
We prototype	One unit, properly built, before anything goes into production. It is also the sample your retailer will want to approve.
We print too	Graphics produced alongside the fabrication they have to match, rather than arriving from a different supplier in a different color.
We think about the store	Retailer specifications, pack-out and assembly are part of the design rather than problems discovered at delivery.
We hold the specification	A repeat run in eighteen months matches the first one.

Frequently Asked Questions About POP Displays

What is a POP display?

A point-of-purchase display is a unit placed in a retail environment to present and sell a specific product at the moment of decision: a countertop unit, a floor stand, an endcap, a shelf tray or a feature piece. It is usually funded by the brand rather than the retailer and is tied to a campaign or a product launch, which is what distinguishes it from the store’s own permanent fixtures.

How much do custom POP displays cost?

It depends on the materials, the construction, the size and above all the quantity. Ten units are effectively bespoke and priced accordingly; a hundred spread the prototype and setup costs across the run and the per-unit price falls sharply. The most useful comparison is usually not per unit but per month in store, because a permanent display that runs for three years often costs less than the corrugated units it replaced.

Will the retailer accept our display?

That depends on their specification, which most major retailers publish and enforce: footprint, height, weight, materials and how the unit relates to their existing fixtures. Send us the specification with your brief and we design it from the start. Where a retailer requires approval of a sample before rollout, the prototype we build is the sample they will assess.

Can a store associate assemble it?

That is a design decision and we treat it as one. Where a display ships flat we aim for tool-free assembly, numbered parts and instructions printed inside the carton lid rather than on a loose sheet that gets thrown away with the packaging. If the unit genuinely needs hardware, it ships attached to the part it belongs to.

What is the difference between a POP display and a store fixture?

A store fixture is permanent, paid for by the retailer, holds the store’s own stock and lasts years. A POP display is campaign-led, usually funded by a brand, promotes a specific product and is placed rather than installed. The materials and construction are different. Velement makes both; see our store fixtures page for the permanent side.

Can you ship to multiple stores?

Yes. Displays can be packed and shipped to your distributor, to your own warehouse, or direct to individual stores, and the pack-out is designed around which of those it is. Two hundred single-store deliveries and one palletized delivery to a distribution center are different packaging problems and they are decided before production, not after.

Can you match our brand colors on the display?

Yes, and this is where fabrication and print under one roof matters. A display that combines printed graphics, painted metal and acrylic has the same brand color reproduced three different ways, and matching them is a process rather than a hope. We resolve it once and record it.

How long does a POP display take to produce?

The prototype stage sets the timeline more than the production does, and retailer approval, where it is required, is usually the longest single stage. Tell us the in-store date at the first conversation and we work back from it rather than forward from today.