Do Planograms EVER make sense?

[GingerBiscuit]

Our sister company is doing a refit, and I've been helping them out. It has already taken twice as long as it should, partly because several hours are spent trying to figure out the planograms. In the planograms we've been given:

Shelfs aren't big enough to fit products they want on, proven (many times) by them putting them seven notches apart vertically, and then wanting us to put something 8/9 notches high in it.

Products that we have and aren't discontinued arent on the planogram.

Products we don't have and are discontinued are on the planogram.

Products aren't given enough space lengthways.

You aren't given any product description at all. You are given a shelf code, which is fine when they are own bran, but not when you are staring at too almost identical non-own-brand products, trying to figure out which 'bcare gluc chon' they want WHERE.

It took me an hour and a half to do one bay, and it looks nothing like the planogram, because I started with the planogram, and then moved stuff around to fit.

[Kara]

I HATE planograms. At Circuit City, some of them changed weekly. It would show a little tiny space but the product itself was enormous. Or the other way around. The area for the planogram is not big enough (or way too big), there's no way to fit 10 rows of peghooks without a degree in Quantum Physics and being able to alter time/space. Then they bitch because "that's not to planogram!" They know it doesn't fit, can't possibly fit, but they still insist that you make it fit "somehow."

We had a Planogram specialist in our store. This guy got paid to print out the new planograms and put them in the appropriate areas to get rid of the old ones. He never did a single planogram, though he would occasionally tell you that X planogram is wrong and you need to fix it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Oh you and your fanciful ideas about planograms making sense.

At my store, products we don't have and are discontinued get faced over with something else. Such as the stuff that isn't discontinued but has no space in the planogram.

And if we have to move shelves around to make things fit, we go ahead and do it. It's not as if the suits are going to produce a tape measure and mark us down if the shelves aren't at the precise height dictated by the planogram.

[crazylegs]

When at the Chemists (working) we were told the most ridiculous rumour, that the company had a warehouse and actually made the shelves up before creating the planogram. Load of old tosh, if they did they must have been on acid because on every sheet there was an error.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I've grown to dread Reset Time . . . which comes monthly.

Our reset team used to be pretty good . . . but since the longtime lead left last fall it's deteriorated.

The girl who took it over is currently out on maternity leave. The person who replaced her in the meantime does - bluntly speaking - a crappy job.

The people who come in now just do pretty much what they feel like doing. They'll mark several sections to be done (shelves will be marked by a red sticker with the month of reset written on them) but won't do all the sections that are marked.

The ones that they do when they come in . . . half the handwritten tags will have the wrong codes on them, which creates headaches when ordering. I can key in either order code or UPC, but if both of those are incorrect, then I have NO clue what the item code is and cannot order the tag.

Half the special shelving/fixtures don't come in before the scheduled reset, so half the product stays in the back until fixtures do come in. And then it's hurry up and wait for them to lollygag back in to half-assemble the fixtures and place the product (I'm currently waiting on an install of fixtures for dog/cat collars.)

Then they'll leave stuff that's been taken off the planogram sitting on the floor instead of taking everything to the backroom. They don't label correctly what's backstock and what's not in set or discontinued. They pretty much just toss it in the backroom for us to deal with later.

Add to that Corporate not sending out correct planograms for our store. Half the time the planogram they have doesn't match the size section we have. If we've got a 16 foot section for cough/cold products, why would corporate give us a planogram for a 20 foot section? I know that's not the fault of the reset team, but still somebody at Corporate needs to come into our store and visually see and measure our sections beforehand.

Luckily, the week they come, I'm off on that day so I don't have to be there. Otherwise, I'd probably be sitting in a jail cell making friends with Big Bertha

[Ducky Dew]

There are two divisions to our company, and our stores are the smaller of the two. Add to that most of the fixtures in our store are from the previous retail businesses in that location. My Bossman has been the manager for 3 or 4 (forget which) different businesses in this one location.

Corp. sends planograms that are set on 5 ft sections. Over half of our store is set w/ 4 ft sections. They also have the insanely annoying habit of putting the same product up twice, in two totally different places. We had a certain dishwashing soap in 3 spots, and no, they were not striped, ie item is on three shelves one over the other. No, the were just kind of stuck in like "Oh, I need to fill this spot, here this will work." We get pictures of how it's supposed to look, someone has actually set a shelf w/ this plan, but they generally don't fit our shelves.

We set as close as we can and then step back and take a good hard look. Then we change what we need to change to make it look better. As long as we have all the product worked out and it looks neat and clean and flows well, the suits haven't yet complained.

[Cyanocobalamin]

My issue with planos was that upon printing the entire set of bin labels [price tags], I would ALWAYS end up missing a few. Even upon printing the missing labels, there would be a 1 or 2 missing out of -those- !

[MadMike]

One day, when I was still working at the supermarket, I came in and noticed that everything in my aisle was switched around. Worse yet, stuff that didn't move was given huge spots, while the fast-movers were given almost no space.

The bigwigs sent their people in, who completely FUBARed every single aisle. I was told not to mess with it, because this is how they wanted it.

So naturally, I gradually started moving everything back the way it was, over a period of several weeks. They never noticed.

[powerboy]

My beef with Planograms, is that not everything will fit on them. When I was working at OfficeMax, I would set them how they wanted it. But it would not look like it did on paper.

[edible_hat]

Of course planograms don't make sense. If they did, you wouldn't need them as you'd just arrange the shelf sensibly anyway.

[Linda]

Oh Happy Day! My company has just got rid of plannograms completely. Their reasoning is that the management and staff in a particular location know what sells and what doesn't, so it's now down to us. As long as it's tidy and sensible, anything goes. Yay!

[hecubus]

Do Planograms ever make sense? Why, yes they do. On Planogram World. Just down the road from Bizarro World.

[GingerBiscuit]

At least I know it's not just us. What made it worse was having a two-floor store and basically moving everything from downstairs (sports nutrition, great, big, huge pots) to upstairs (vitamins, herbs, minerals, tiny little pots) and vice versa.

The area manager who was helping us out (I work 5 to 11 with them sunday night, they worked till about two) kept stopping dead, staring at a random product, going 'WHAT? Where does THIS go?' and shaking his head. Poor man. He's only been with the company three months.

[Gurndigarn]

Oh Happy Day! My company has just got rid of plannograms completely. Their reasoning is that the management and staff in a particular location know what sells and what doesn't, so it's now down to us. As long as it's tidy and sensible, anything goes. Yay!

How the hell did you manage to get a company that actually thought local management had brains? My company used to, once upon a time, back when the people running the show had come up through the ranks. But as the place became more corporate, they started trusting local management less and less.

How did the a corporation go in reverse?

[Linda]

How did the a corporation go in reverse?

Basically, the company is losing money, and they've tried everything else already!

So on top of no more plannograms, we also have the ability to run different offers or to stop offers if they don't work for us. We can also price match other shops as long as we still make a profit on the item or service.

And the best best bit...we now have profitshare, where I (as store manager) get 50% of all the profit my store makes, uncapped, on a month by month basis. That's good for me anyways because my store is one of only 5 or 6 company wide making a profit (we're 10% up on last year)

In other words...corporate is desperate!