Are we or are we not using any monthly visual directives for merchandising?? Seems like the stores that laid off experienced visual captains or STM’s are just putting the clothes out and staging in a hodge podge mess..I thought we were leaning towards making it look clean??? Haven’t seen a VMD at our location since the beginning of the year?? What happened to the merchandising standards??
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As a former employee merchandise team never cleaned, filled in or did fitting room putaways. Simply hung items on the side of wrap stands & continuously complained about what sales people didn’t do. Seems now there is a better understanding of what it’s like to balance being the only sales person covering multiple areas and being accountable for fitting rooms and all these additional tasks while still providing customer service to achieve sales metrics Not as easy as a merchandiser who worked half their shift during times of no or little customer traffic portrayed Unfortunately the reduction in staff across the board has made it impossible to come together & complete non sell tasks properly leaving stores an utter mess, customers & employees frustrated and sales are lost because items either can’t be found or sit unable to reach the selling floor resulting in lost sales & goods being reduced before they ever see the selling floor
We need to bring back the merchandise team! A FULL team of competent people! They're the ones that do all the work. Just imagine how great your stores would look if you had the correct number of staff to take their time to merchandise and clean, fill in the floors and put fitting room away in the right spots. Your markdowns would be complete and moved. Your last act would be sized. And guess what your sales would be better too! So let's put the money and staff back into stores where we need it and not sitting behind a desk in an office!
Keep phone hiring Gen Z, the laziest generation ever with 100% turnover.
Fortunately in my store my crew is still in tact so merchandising is to standard, but when it comes to recovery complete nightmare and when are merchandising new goods its such a hot mess it takes forever bc there is no staff to ring and cover the floor. They need to do something about hiring more staff which in turn would probably bring more sales as that seems to be the biggest issue with NPS.
No visuals in furniture since covid. Displaying by category - looks like a warehouse.
The problem in my store is there are a small group of former merchandisers that were forced to the floor by staff changes. They are the only ones putting merchandise the correct way but are switched from department to department daily and cannot finish the job . Plus they are also doing the price changes ,fitting rooms and ringing customers. Its a mess because of policy, and the laziness of captians and execs not forcing others to learn the standards and participate in the workload. ZOGS are useless unless people are taught how to use them. We should go back to merchandisers they would at least clean up the racks while they merchandise instead of the drive by drop and run from the fitting room. We did this to ourselves
Same at our location. Clothes being placed incorrectly is a problem too.. and the fitting room crew just throwing the clothes anywhere. No one at my store follows any kind of merchandising standard but one associate who’s been there for years. I’m thinking they don’t care because the store will probably be closing soon.