A Peek Into a Wholesaler Warehouse, Part Two
A merchandising visit to a nearby WalMart superstore shows, soup to nuts, what a Source Interlink merchandiser does on a typical day.
BY Linda Ruth
http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2013/
"Our job is to make sure that what is supposed to happen in the store is what does happen," said Don Petras, director of Field Service for Source Interlink
That is the reason why every single one of the 4,000 merchandisers in Source Interlink's employ (expanded to 11,000 thanks to a recent partnership with Retail Marketing Professionals) has a store-specific binder for each location the merchandiser is expected to service once or twice a week.
For Part Two of my visit to Source Interlink, hosted by David Algire, EVP of Source Interlink Media, Petras had taken us out on a merchandising visit to a nearby WalMart superstore to show us, soup to nuts, what a Source Interlink merchandiser does on a typical day.
"We have three directors; each has about half a dozen district managers," Petras said. "Each of those managers has about nine full time supervisors, and each of those supervisors has between 80 and 150 storefronts. The supervisors' main role is hiring and training. Of course there tends to be turnover in merchandisers, everyone knows that. That is why our supervisors stay with each new employee till he or she really knows the job. They'll spend three full weeks with the employee in a store like this, a Super WalMart. It's challenging. A store like this, that takes maybe half a day to service, could take a full day at this time of year. Let me show you why."
He took us back to the storage bay, already crammed with merchandise. "This is only going to get more crowded as we get closer to the holiday season," he said. "We're in all our stores within three hours of delivery to get the product checked in and on the shelves. A waste of time becomes a waste of sale."
He brought us to the front of the store, where he showed how they roll the checkout replenishment, aisle by aisle, to minimize empty pockets. "Every empty pocket represents a sale lost; it's something we remember when we're restocking."
Frustratingly, merchandisers are not permitted in the stores on the very busiest days-the day after Thanksgiving, for example. The thinking is that they get in the way of shoppers. Petras is philosophical.
"We have to make sure that the stores are at their best going into the high-volume days," he said. "Otherwise there is nothing we can do."
Source is testing a weekend touchup to make sure pockets are full and displays are neat. They've noticed an uptick in sales in the 4,000 stores in the program now, and are gradually rolling this test out to more stores.
"When we walk into a store, our goal is perfection," he said.
See Also: A Peek Into a Wholesaler Warehouse, Part One
Linda Ruth is Principal of Publisher Single Copy Sales Services. Her book of case studies, "How to Market Your Magazine on the Newsstand," is available at BookDojo.com and atAmazon.
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