How to Ensure Your Heavy Beverage Displays Stand Strong
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Spending hours designing a beverage display only for it to buckle under the weight of products after a few days is a waste of your time and resources. Your displays could also pose a safety risk due to falling items. Crucially, a sagging display signals damaged goods and hits your bottom line. With UD Direct's lightweight, durable steel reinforcements, you can ensure your heavy beverage displays stand strong, keep your customers' attention and protect your bottom line.
Why Standard Displays Fail Under Heavy Loads
Beverage displays face a unique challenge due to the density of liquids. A gallon of water weighs around 8.3 pounds. Sodas or other beverages can weigh more due to added ingredients like sugar. A standard corrugated shelf has a limit, or load-bearing capacity, that heavy beverages often exceed. This causes the shelf to collapse.
Grocery store floors are often wet. A standard cardboard display wicks up moisture, causing the base to lose structural integrity, significantly reduce its load-bearing capacity and collapse.
Meeting the Standards of Major Retail Chains
Major retailers have strict compliance guides for displays. If retailers deem your display to be structurally unsound or unsafe, it never makes it into the store. If at any point your display begins to crumple, the retailers will pull it from the floor. Aesthetically, stores may also refrain from putting out displays that look untidy. The real issue is safety — retailers do not want to risk a lawsuit over a soda display that cannot support its load.
Strong, durable displays can also help protect retail staff. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration instructs retail staff to report improperly stacked pallets to the supplier to help prevent injuries. OSHA also recommends keeping work between waist and shoulder height. When a display collapses or crumples, the product falls to the floor or otherwise forces stockers into awkward postures. This can increase the retailer's liability for musculoskeletal disorders.
Meeting the store's compliance guide ensures your beverage display performs at its best on the shop floor, maximizing sales while minimizing any safety hazards for shoppers and staff.
How Structural Reinforcement Ensures Heavy-Duty Performance
Structural reinforcement enables you to continue using cost-effective temporary corrugated displays while delivering lasting performance. Let's explore UD Direct's range of retail display supports.
Shelf Tubes
Using UD Direct's steel shelf tubes underneath corrugated shelves provides the support needed to handle the weight of heavy liquids. This invisible reinforcement prevents any sagging. By stabilizing the shelf, you can confidently stack more product per square foot, maximizing sales volume without risking collapse.
Our shelf tubes have a range of options, such as:
Rounded turndowns in ¾ inch
Square turndowns in a variety of dimensions
Color options with in-house powder coating available
Turndowns can be 90 degrees or 45 degrees
29-gauge pre-tinned lock seam tubing or 22-gauge zinc-plated weld seam tubing
Wire Feet
There are two similar types of wire feet, and both help provide extra support for fiber tube displays. Wire feet also offer a wide, stable base for corrugated board.
Hollywood wire feet: These are essential for top-heavy pole displays and best for larger or heavier items that require motion. For example, a rotating display that gives customers better access to your beverage or flavor range. The standard 24-inch spread provides the stability you need for your motion displays.
Pole feet: These perform the same function for lighter, smaller displays. Also known as crows' feet, pole feet are a low-cost method for pole displays.
Our feet support various poles and tubes, from corrugated to litho wrapped. We make our wire feet from lightweight galvanized steel, making your displays easy for retail staff to set up and move.
Flute Wire
Flute wire fits inside the flutes of displays to offer extra structural support. Using flute wire minimizes bending in die-cut windows and increases the overall structural integrity of the display, reinforcing weaker areas like scored creases. You can also use these to attach lug-ons.
Support your beverage displays with sturdy, eye-catching signs. Signs better resist creases and folds when reinforced with flute wire. In busy retail spaces, this helps customers find your products.
Find UD Direct 15-gauge flute wires in various lengths from 6 to 24 inches.
Pegboard Hooks
Use pegboard hooks for more creative beverage displays or showcase extra non-beverage promotional products. Hooks maximize vertical space for hanging lightweight, high-margin accessories that complement beverage products. For example, flavor mix-ins, branded koozies or bottle openers. Hooks can also support utility baskets, giving you another option for cross-marketing.
Our chrome slatwall hooks are 1 inch with a 4-gauge backplate. You can customise the length of the center position stem and the speedy back metal hooks.
Beverage Display Placement
Durable display solutions mean you place your beverages in high-traffic areas like end caps or checkout lanes with confidence. Displays in these hot zones need the most reinforcement as they need to withstand bumps from carts and constant restocking.
Invisible supports, such as steel shelf tubes, provide stability and aesthetics without the need for bulky cardboard dividers. This allows you to design cleaner, more open design displays to grab shoppers' attention and drive sales.
Why Reinforcement Is Better Than Replacement
The key mistake merchandisers make with corrugated displays is assuming that because they are temporary, you should spend as little as possible. This is a false economy. While you want to keep production costs down, skipping structural support for heavy beverages increases the risk that your display will fail.
The cost of adding some wire components outweighs the cost of a failed display. When a display fails, you would have to factor in:
Product loss: You have to write off damaged inventory, like burst cans or bottles
Disposal fees: Retailers could charge you for noncompliance or disposal and clean up costs.
Lost sales: Every hour your product is off the floor, you lose revenue.
Emergency reprints: Rush charges for manufacturing and shipping replacements can be costly.
Reinforced displays last longer and minimize waste. By extending the life of your displays, you align with retailers' sustainability goals and help reduce your organization's environmental impact. UD Direct uses steel, North America's most recycled material, to reinforce displays as well as other eco-friendly materials.
Partner With UD Direct for Durable Custom Beverage Display Solutions
Choosing reliable components to reinforce your beverage displays ensures your products are given the best platform to maximize sales. Eliminating sagging, crumpling displays protects your brand's appearance and the safety of staff and shoppers.
UD Direct has provided industry-leading retail display solutions for over 60 years. We provide fully customized components, all proudly made in the USA, to fit your displays. Contact us today to design the best support system for your heavy beverage displays.