If you’ve been reading along, you know that in the past three months, we’ve moved two stores. This has been a crazy, hectic time in our life, especially since one of the moves involved moving the headquarters — an office that had been in one place for almost 30 years!
Along the way, I’ve learned some stuff. And boy, some of it really wasn’t pleasant.
You have to understand that we’ve got vendors we’ve been working with for years. Decades. So when they offered to help us set up the new store, absolutely we jumped at the chance. We’ve got strong relationships with these companies, and I was looking forward to seeing what they could do.
It was mind-boggling: mind boggling how much these vendors really didn’t care about us! In a lot of cases, I wound up with double inventory, when vendors ordered the same exact merchandise I was moving from the old store to the new store!
And I’m flabbergasted at the absolute lack of the ability to merchandise effectively! This is what vendors do, all day every day! Yet we gave them endcaps to fill, and they put product in — but no pricing, no signage, and they didn’t even check to see if the product was in the computer system!
For example, one guy handled canned pet food. He had five flavors to stock — and he arranged them horizontally, filling the shelves so full you couldn’t get a hand in there to take a can out. Think about that: arranging five flavors, horizontally. What happens if you want the flavor on the bottom?
Another display had dog harnesses all the way at the top of a 7 foot tall gondola. Kareem Abdul Jabar couldn’t have reached these things without jumping — how are my customers supposed to get them?
Honestly, Mr. Vendor, Ms. Vendor, all independent retailers want from you is for you to make it easier for my guys to sell your products! Now, my guys are in hot water too — they should have never let you out of the store with the shelves looking like that! Now we’ve got a new rule going on the books: nothing goes out on our sales floor if it’s not priced, in the computer, and signed.
We just want to sell your merchandise. Why are you making it so difficult?
