The company embraces a customer-led approach to its sourcing, proactively conducting market research, tracking customer buying behaviour, and tailoring merchandising offers and services that satisfy their needs.

Ms Piovesana said the emphasis was on getting the right merchandise and the key to successful retailing was about understanding your clientele in terms of their profiles, needs and aspirations in a micro and macro environment, especially at the airport. The micro environment is the airport, while the macro environment refers to the regional and even global passenger movements that are being affected by social, political and economic trends.

Nuance-Watson uses a scientific approach to determine its customers' tastes and desires to 'better fulfil the potential of brands, respond to specific customer needs, put in place targeted direct marketing efforts and optimise store merchandising'.

Systematic tracking via an advanced point-of-sales system can get information regarding nationality, number of transactions, contribution to the business and average spend. The market information is then gathered, and analysed by store, product category and brand, all the way to the stock-keeping unit.

'Armed with this information, we can regularly review and maximise our merchandising mix,' Ms Piovesana said.

Six merchandising teams are devoted to each product category - electronics, beauty, fashion, luxury hard goods, packaged food and destination souvenir. But because each product is unique, each category's buying team builds on their own specialised knowledge, expertise, experience and category insights to source products.

For example, Ms Piovesana said that to maintain a competitive edge, retail electronics at the airport was about getting the latest models ahead of others in the region, so the merchandising team had to build excellent relations with the vendors to assure product availability and benchmark regional pricing, while fashion buyers had to focus on items that were easy, convenient and stylish for travellers in addition to the brand's awareness and popularity.

'To source the right assortment, again, in-depth understanding of customers will have to come first,' she said.

The merchandising team takes a direct buy-to-fit approach to tailor merchandise ranges and solicit exclusive products and offers for its customers at the airport. 'Contrary to most operators' central collective buying approach, we ensure greater flexibility and adaptability of our selections and stocking level,' Ms Piovesana said.

But simply satisfying an on-the-move clientele is not enough; Nuance-Watson's retail success is also attributed to its unique and strategic merchandising set-up. The unique system incorporates another independent and standalone business unit called the merchandising planning department, which reports directly to the regional managing director.

While the merchandising team focuses on the actual buying and selection of products, strategic category development and liaisons with vendors, the merchandising planning team is one step ahead in terms of budget planning and control, and managing the total supply chain of the company. It is also responsible for managing the key performance indicator's achievements to ensure merchandising productivity.

Joann Chung, controller for merchandising planning, supply chain and special projects, said: 'Basically it combines the planning, administration and controlling side of things.'

Ms Piovesana said that merchandising planning served as a control to the merchandising department to ensure productivity in the best interest of the company, while serving as a bridge linking merchandising operations to the supply chain process until products hit the shelf.

'In particular for diversified operations like us which span a wide range of merchandise from FMCG [fast moving consumer goods] to high-end luxury, merchandising planning helps to ensure hardware and software cater for the different natures and specific requirements of different categories,' she said.

The reason for this set-up is to streamline and ensure the smooth running of a wild assortment of products catering for 400 vendors carrying more than 600 brands in over 43 locations.

Ms Chung said: 'You can imagine, this company carries such a wide assortment of products, it's almost like working in totally different industries that go as far as electronics to luxury and fashion products.

'To achieve the company's objectives, we need a special function that can act like a backbone to guide the whole company in merchandising and supply chain management and performance and the way to achieve it.'

Merchandising, Ms Chung said, also became more challenging in an airport environment because products brought in were being sold in a confined environment.

There was only one chance of selling to one customer in a limited time so it required a lot more expertise and category insight from the merchandising side in buying the right products and getting them to customers on time to warrant maximum sell-through.

As a testament to its successful merchandising and retail operation, the company which celebrated its 10th anniversary last month, won the 'Best Fashion, Leather goods and Accessories Travel Retailer' and 'Best Gift Travel Retailer' awards at the DFNI Asia-Pacific Awards in May along with more than 40 other international and local awards received in the past decade.

Ms Piovesana said: 'Product merchandising is a constant quest for newness, which is an ever-improving process. We think this is the direction we should continue to nurture for the next decade.'