12 days and counting…
The slatwall is on a truck coming by a detour through the
twilight zone. Yes, we are assured it will be here any day now … We've got the
merchandise and the slatwall hooks and as soon as we get the slatwall itself we'll have a
place to put everything. Maybe tomorrow…
All the showcases are now in place. Careful use of levers
means that nobody else is going to the chiropractor, and I'm finally starting to feel
better myself.
The day before retiring from my business in New Jersey I
attended a great meeting of the New York/New Jersey Metro Division of the PMAI. The
speaker was Chris Miller of Pacific Store Design. Miller gave us more information on store
design for improved sales and I'm trying to implement his concepts as much as possible.
Since most North Americans tend to turn right on entering a store, we've concentrating
visual appeal and new stuff and high ticket items on the "drive channel" that
way. We actually set the showcase island about 1" off-center so that the right-hand
aisle is just a smidgeon wider and more inviting. It will be interesting to see if
merchandising theory translates into cash-register reality.
Merchandise shipments weren't supposed to arrive until this
week. That is, every purchase order said "ship to arrive week of October 18th."
Some of the vendors jumped the gun and we had product arrive as early as September 29th,
but now the onslaught is really underway.
We're trying to put prices and PLU on everything as soon as
it arrives. Each day I'm finding that I neglected to generate price/PLU info for one or
two items, so each night I'm revising the database.
Among the products that arrived today were digital cameras
from Olympus. I used a 450 Zoom for the picture above. This is a super camera, looks like
their Sylus Zoom series of 35mm cameras and shows how far digital has come in the last few
years.
We're putting merchandise in the showcases facing the front
of the store so that passersby can start getting excited. The sidewalk traffic in downtown
Aiken is wonderful and several people each day pop their head in the door to ask
questions. Hope they come back when we're actually ready to do business…
next installment
Our story so far
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