Holiday Checklist - Part 3 Stores

This is the third, and final, post of the Holiday Checklist series.  The first dealt with Assortments, the second with Inventory and Receipt Flow.  Depending on your company's format, this post is potentially the most critical. The stores are where all your good ideas and strategies are put to the test - this is where your success is determined.  Here are some key points to consider:

• No changes.  Make sure you are not implementing any new processes or systems after the first of October that will have an impact on the stores.  Your store teams need to be strictly focused on driving the business.
• Reality check on the staffing plan.  A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that over a third of retailers are planning on significantly less payroll than 2008.  With business tough, this is certainly understandable.  If this is your strategy, you need to be sure you have a  plan that can be executed.  If the payroll plan doesn't match the transaction counts, one or more of the following is likely to happen - receipts will pile up in the receiving area to get marked down after the 1st of the year, lines at the checkout will get so long that customers will abandon their purchases and leave, and/or customer service will disappear.  Here's a quick reality check:
• Figure out how many units are coming and going at the store by week, beginning with the start of Holiday deliveries to the stores.  This includes unit receipts coming in and unit sales going out along with markdowns and floor moves.
• Divide that number by the number of Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) scheduled for each week.
• Ask yourself if this is possible.  Better yet, ask your field organization.
• If you're pushing the edge of reality, here's some tips to help alleviate the stress:
• Spread your Holiday receipts out by week based on the sales pattern.  This will help the flow out of the back room.
• Minimize the amount of floor moves.  Better to not schedule a move than have it done haphazardly.
• Put as many of your key items, best sellers, and features on the floor as possible.  These will sell out faster than anything else.  You don't want your associates in the back room on a Saturday looking for fill-ins.  Depending on the merchandise, put it on pallets if you have to.  Your customers are more interested in having the merchandise on the floor than the aesthetics.
• Cross-train everyone, including management, on how to run the checkout process.  Devise a signal based on the length of the lines to bring help to the front end.  Your customers will appreciate your responsiveness.
• Minimize communications to the store during the Holiday period.  You want your General Manager on the floor, not working on e-mails in the office.
• Schedule home office visits to the stores thoughtfully.  You definitely want to see what's going on in the stores, but you also want to avoid distracting the store team.
• Anticipate visual impact on the sales floor.  Another recent article discussed the trend among retailers to reduce inventories proportionately lower than sales.  Even though sales and inventory levels may be lower than last year, inventories will still be at their highest level of the year over the next few months.  Still, it's worthwhile to look at the unit inventories and then match that to the unit capacity of your store fixtures, particularly for the lower volume stores  This will tell you what your customer will see when they come into the store.  If you're having a hard time getting the store to look full, here's some simple tips:
• Replace fixtures with displays bringing multiple categories together for lifestyle or problem-solving themes.
• Face apparel out rather than showing sleeves
• Replace 12" pegs with 4-6" pegs
• Increase the use of graphics to fill dead space.
• Merchandise the checkout area.  Hopefully there will be lots of customers standing around the checkout area.  Make sure you've got a merchandise strategy to take advantage of that fact.  The specific merchandise will vary based on your business, but whatever it is, it should share 3 attributes - low retail, appropriate for the season, solid depth of inventory.
• Energize the field organization.  Sam Walton once said that "your customers will be treated exactly the same as you treat your store associates".  This is without a doubt the most stressful time of the year for your store associates, particularly if there are fewer of them than last year.  If there was ever a time to recognize and reward the people that work with your customers, this is it.

This is the last post of the three-part Holiday Checklist series.  While I won't promise that following these guidelines will guarantee great Holiday sales, I can promise you that following these guidelines will produce better looking stores, inventory in the right places at the right times, better customer service, and a more profitable season.

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