Tag: Jean Claude

In blog 70 I talked about how the only constant in retail is change In this blog I wanted to talk about how problems are a gift.

So as I said in earlier, I bought a ton of salt water sandals for the event, now I needed to figure out where I was going to put them all. Our stockroom was really small. I took my jacket off one day and shifted the whole stockroom to make room for the sandals. Even after all that,we were about a few sections short .

Solutions

Jean Claude called me into his office to ask me questions about the sale. I told him I was concerned about the back stock. “Put them in my office if you have to, he said with a grin”. Pretty sure he was joking but I was going to keep that in mind. “Check around the store and see if you can find something to store them in”

I found a fixture room that just needed to be straightened out. The team and I organized it and soon enough we had a large corner of the room for back stock. We would keep a tally on what we had here and check things off as we pulled them. After the first weekend we would have enough to bring them over.

We ended up having a very successful event, sold a lot more than the previous year and I learned something. When planning a large event you have to plan how much stock you need to fuel the event and also where you will store the excess inventory. This happened again later in my career but was a little better prepared because of this lesson

“Every problem is a gift. Without them we wouldn’t grow” – Tony Robbins

In Blog 69 I talked about doing your best work. In this blog I wanted to talk about how the only constant in retail is change.

One day Jim has a store meeting to announce he’s leaving. The good news was he was being promoted to the GM of the Northern California region. “Good for him” I thought. I had such a great relationship with him I was happy for him but sad to see him go.

Jean Claude

Our new Store Manager was a gentleman from Portland, his name was Jean Claude. He was tall, handsome and very well dressed. He was wearing an amazing suit and came from the Men’s clothing area. Made sense by the way he dressed. He had a French accent which I liked, and was very well educated. He made his rounds meeting everyone and seemed like a good guy.

Saltwater Sale Event

So my head was spinning with all the changes, I was getting my arms around the new job and we had an event coming up. The “Saltwater sandal” event was a big sandal sale around a very popular sandal in the kid’s area. The sole of the shoe was very stiff but the uppers were a water resistant leather. The style came in an array of colors and even went up to women’s sizes for a “Mommy & Me” kind of thing.

One thing about the kid’s area was the had a lot less inventory than the women’s area. In talking to the employees we always sold out of these sandals right away. Hmmm I wonder if we bought into the sale more what we could that mean for business. I looked at old PO’s and saw what the history was and figured out I “should be” buying a lot more. I decided to go for it.

Doing your best work

“No guts no glory” I thought, I had been upping quantities in some of the other areas in the department and my business was really good, so I knew by going narrow and deep on key items, I would be successful. I think my new merchandiser about had a heart attack when we went over my plan, but she supported me thinking we could always move stuff around. She probably thought this new guy from women’s was some hot dog, so I had to be right on this. One question remained…

“Where am I going to put all this stuff?

“The only constant in life is change”-Heraclitus