Putzing around with planograms...again

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Well back to school season is coming up, which means setting all new planograms for back to school merchandise. Yay

Tonight my job was to set a planogram for color-coordinated metal storage containers, wastebaskets, and lamps geared towards people going to college.

In this planogram we had some storage carts which are basically metal tubing with canvas drawers and casters on the bottom. The planogram called for these carts to be stocked on the bottom shelf in their boxes, with a display for each cart built and displayed on the shelf above.

So I get everything else set in the planogram, assemble the display carts...and find the displays will not really fit on the shelf. One of them is basically teetering off the edge of the shelf and falls off the shelf if you look at it the wrong way.

I wasn't able to rearrange shelves to spead the carts out a little more, because the merchandise on the shelves next to the carts required the shelves to be placed at different heights. So unless we find some way to secure this particular cart to the pegboard, there's a good chance it will fall on somebody. It's not heavy enough to really hurt a person, but it will put a good scare into you if it falls on you.

Meh, not that I care. I'm not paid enough to care. I'm not the moron who sits in the corporate office and screws up all the planograms.

[Knightmare]

ahh, the joys of setting up planograms. When I worked at RadioShack, we had to set up new planograms every month. The geniuses at Ft. Worth (corp. HQ) always had a planogram where a person had to fit about 6 feet of crap into a 2 foot space. At HQ, they have a store where they do an actual physical planogram before sending them out; however, I always suspected they never did it. They just put down what looked good. Items never fit. They had old, discontinued merchandise; or better yet, items that were so new that they wouldn't be in the stores for months.
And who got stuck with the planograms? Me. Most of the time, I didn't follow it. I got so good at merchandising and knowing what people bought, that I did it my own way. It always looked better that what corp. sent our way. My manager didn't care, cuz he knew I would do a good job. I only got into trouble once, when the RM came down for store visits. He told the manager to change the section I just finished that morning. I got started on it, and when he left, I put it all back to how I had it before.

The problem with planograms is that they are designed by people that have either been out of a real store for so long they forget what it's like, or are designed by people that have never set foot into the store.
Or they are really, really high.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The problem with planograms is that they are designed by people that have either been out of a real store for so long they forget what it's like, or are designed by people that have never set foot into the store.
Or they are really, really high.

That's exactly it.

Another thing that happens is corporate doesn't take into account how products are packaged. This spring I reset planograms in electronics and the planograms called for items in larger boxes to be hung on peghooks. Of course I didn't do that. I just re-arranged things so that I could lay the boxes on the shelf. The managers don't care if you have to change things in the planogram as long as every item in the planogram is represented in the section. It's not as if the corporate suits actually take the planograms and check to make sure everything is where it should be whenever they visit.

Another thing that will happen is that items will be "shrunk" or "expanded" so it looks like it fits the planogram. Sometimes there will be a picture of the item to assist you in setting the planogram, and the picture may be shrunk or expanded to look like the item fits in the space provided, but it doesn't fit when you set the planogram.

[HYHYBT]

The thing is, that *can't* be simple carelessness. If they went through the trouble of shrinking it to make it look like it fits, then someone in a position to correct that knew it was wrong, so they're *intentionally* sending impossible planagrams. But why?

[Naaman]

The thing is, that *can't* be simple carelessness. If they went through the trouble of shrinking it to make it look like it fits, then someone in a position to correct that knew it was wrong, so they're *intentionally* sending impossible planagrams. But why?

Because they have little to no concept of what a day on the floor is like?

[El Barto]

We have to redo the Eye Care plano soon. Its not big, only 8 feet (4 feet for eye drops, 4 for contact lens stuff). The only major change is the contact lens part where a company recalled and stopped making one of thier brands because some moron didnt read the direction and sued them. The other part gas something like this one the top of the page:

No changes to eye drop section
No new items
No Discontinued items

So guess what came in on our delivery today... NEW items for the eye drops section. Morons.

Then theirs the facial care sections. We've been battling corprate for 4 months now because we have a 20ft section for facial, but they sent us a 24 ft plano. We decided to give up, theres already a new one coming out in a couple of weeks, even though it was just done (in most stores) 4 months ago.

[Morrigan]

[QUOTE=El Barto
Then theirs the facial care sections. We've been battling corprate for 4 months now because we have a 20ft section for facial, but they sent us a 24 ft plano. [/QUOTE]

Gah, my party supplier did that to me when we moved to the larger store. I had 24 feet of slatwall plus an extra 6 feet in the corner for my party section, so what do they send me? A planogram that would have required me to use all of that and then take over half of the toy section as well. Luckily Exboss rarely listened to head office, and asked me if I really needed every product in the planogram. I started pointing out everything that I had had to clearance out the last time I made the mistake of ordering it; he wound up chucking the plano and I set up the section the right way.

Happily, since the head office reps were afraid to come into our store, and since we were always either first or second in sales for the whole chain, we could get away with such things.

[Luna]

Gah. I remember at B&N you'd have to box up all the bargain books on the wooden fixtures and actually face out specific titles on those displays. The color pictures they'd send you had all the books on the shelves, and the smaller one would look to be regular size books and the large picture books were always shrunk down to regular size. I think they do it to mess with our heads.

They would require immense childrens picture books on the second shelf (which was 6 inches too small to put them unless you cut part of the book off) and require little board books on the top shelf.

The old DM (who was fired...I mean..."no longer works for the company") would come in and check the fixtures book by stinking book. He actually made us take them all down, break down the fixture (and they are made of solid wood and extremely heavy) and raise all the shelves up several pegs just to fit a book that was too tall b/c he wanted it where the planogram said for it to go. Didn't matter that now the top shelf was unreachable by you average customer. Didn't matter that this 20 plus pound wood shelf loaded with even more pounds of hardcover books was on pegs not meant to be holding that weight...

Even at new awesome job - planograms are sent that make no sense. I redid the clothing area the other day. Once set to planogram - I had over two dozen sets of clothes that weren't on the planogram at all sitting on the floor. I also had huge gaping holes on the shelves where we haven't had the product in months yet they still somehow want it displayed. After wasting over 4 hours doing the planograms - I wound up just putting the stuff where I wanted it anyway. Lesson learned.

[Gurndigarn]

The thing is, that *can't* be simple carelessness. If they went through the trouble of shrinking it to make it look like it fits, then someone in a position to correct that knew it was wrong, so they're *intentionally* sending impossible planagrams. But why?

Because 1) they are on a deadline, and have upper management breathing down their necks, and 2) (only applies to people with common sense) they know you're going to adapt it anyway.