BTS

[Racket_Man]

I was at my local Voldy-Mart getting a few things while my Ex and my Grandson did some shopping for her house.

Now first off today was JULY 7th -- 3 days after July 4th and about 4 week after school has ended. This should clue you in to where this is going

The first thing I notice as I walk in the door is 6 full shelf units of

Back To School Stuff

School does not start back up here for at least 6 - 7 weeks. WOW

And the sad part is is while I was sitting and waiting for Ex to finish her shopping I saw 2 different parents with their children go through said BTS shelves, pick out stuff, and then a bit later pay for said school stuff.

[CyberLurch]

It costs a fortune to warehouse stuff. Doubly so, because each day it sits in a warehouse, it's costing the company money to just sit and NOT sell.

I know what you're thinking. 'Order later'. Nice idea, but you know that's not how it works. The factories in China don't want to warehouse the stuff, either, and once more orders start pouring in, the factories will have to hire more workers. So they offer the retailers a slight price break as an incentive to order early.

I understand why parents want to get it out of the way, too. Once the BTS season officially hits, it gets ugly fast.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Back to school = worst time of the year in retail. Even worse than Christmas. At least for Christmas payroll goes up because people aren't buying notebooks, folders and boxes of crayons at 10 to 25 cents a pop.

[rvdammit]

I suspect the planning thoughts on these is if the customer gets paid monthly then having the promotion two paychecks ahead of the need means that the customer will plan to split their purchases over the two paychecks, but that's two opportunities impulse buys instead of one.

[Kit-Ginevra]

School hasn't even finished here for another three weeks!

[WishfulSpirit]

Retailers always do that. I was at my local grocery store on December 26th. They had Valentines Day stuff out. At least notebooks will keep, and people do use them. Since I have ADHD and can't remember jack, I love me a nice college ruled spiral.

[drunkenwildmage]

When I worked the office supply store, around 2000, we would normally start putting the "Back to School" Ad Set out 2 to 3 weeks after the school year was over. I remember making a comment to someone, that if I was a Kid, I would dread going to the store in the summer time.

Back to school = worst time of the year in retail. Even worse than Christmas. At least for Christmas payroll goes up because people aren't buying notebooks, folders and boxes of crayons at 10 to 25 cents a pop.

With us, it was 'All Hands on Deck', My primary department was Electronics, but through out BTS, I pretty much worked where I was needed, mostly stocking up pencils, paper, pens. To this day, I still have nightmares about people asking if we have any Texas Instruments Scientific Explorer II Calculators in stock. After BTS, we went right into Christmas, and that was a breeze compared to BTS. Come Black Friday, we were pretty much like "Bring it on, we lived through Back To School, we can do anything!! "

[Trixie]

Our BTS stuff is all set in my store now. We don't get nearly as much as we used to though either. The school's in my area are on a year round schedule and they're heading back soon. But the thing is they started in early August even before that. They've just shuffled around the vacation time.

[InsanityInc]

Just throwing in my , I only get paid twice a month, and am picking up supplies for my daughter as I can. I don't want \ can't afford to pay for everything in one shopping trip. Eases the pain a little to split it up as I find things on sale.

[cindybubbles]

Back to school = worst time of the year in retail.

Don't forget, it's also the worst time of the year for the kids. They don't want to be reminded of unfun stuff like homework and classes!

[bainsidhe]

What's scary is that folks around here should buy their school supplies early. Never wait until a few weeks before school starts, because everything is picked over and the selection is terrible. Local schools require their students to have specific colors of folders and notebooks for each subject. Which means hell for the employees when, naturally, colors are suddenly out of stock.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

So, last week a memo came down from the DM. BTS and BTC areas must be 100% set and stocked by Wednesday.

Yeah, I got a good laugh out of that. Over the next three days, the remaining patio furniture displays (and there are a lot of them, including the huge-ass pergola that some corporate McNugget thought would be a good item to sell even though we haven't sold even one) have to be moved, a couple gondolas have to be built, shelves and peghooks have to be set, and all the product for those sections has to be pulled from the backroom and stocked. Yeah, not going to happen.

Several stores inquired how they are supposed to pull this off because they are so short-staffed. Corporate's solution: ask other stores if they can spare people to come in and help. Which they can't, but if they could, those people would get paid mileage and OT for their trouble, and stores can't give overtime to their own people.

As I like to say, I think; therefore I will never have a corporate job.

[Luna Baby]

I'm kind of thankful our BTS stuff was out early. Both of my boys have taken or are taking higher level classes in high school and the teachers always require those 3 inch binders for those classes. If I wait until after they get their confirmed schedules, there are no binders available in the store and I have to order through our local business supply and pay quite a bit more for each binder. I managed to score 3 of the 3" binders last night under $10/each. I call that one a win.

[gremcint]

I work for staples. Starting back to school stuff this early is a necessity. we are dead during the summer, absolutely dead. So we get all of the back to school stuff in and get it set up as wuickly as possible as it trickles in. That way when we hit the mob of angry annoyin parents we have our shit together. if we waited until september it's be a shit show. There's no other option.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

We're expecting ours in any time. And the sad part is: we grocery stores don't usually move a lot of BTS stuff unless other places have run out. We also have limited selection of items as well.

And I was just talking to Becca this past Friday about it and she's still got stuff in the security room from last year that we couldn't move. And Corporate is supposed to send an amount that's pre determined going by last years' sales (yeah, right) so there's no telling what kind of junk we're liable to see roll in this coming week.