In Blog #120  I talked about about settling into a new position. In this blog I want to talk about what is the gameplan.

Scott came to the store the next day and walked the floor with me. He pointed out the hot brands and explained the demographics of the store. The customers liked the tailored items and we sold brands that had expanded sizes well. 

He was very patient and was nice to work with. Right away I appreciated him and listened to his advice. I liked him right off the bat and felt fortunate I’ve had really great RMM’s in my career.

Stockroom

We then went into the back stockroom and I could see right away we had a space challenge I’d have to figure out. The stockroom had really high shelves too. Scott went through my PO book with me and gave me his points of focus. 

Nickels

After Scott left, I dug into the Nickels brand a bit more as it was a tailored brand that did quite well in this store. I called Terry the rep, who I met earlier in Arden Fair. He was a great rep who was a big help in driving our business for us. The next morning my plan was to put this brand in the “Boardwalk” position as Kent once suggested to me. 

Sudini

The next brand I took a look at was Sudini. This was primarily a boot brand that we sold well in the fall and had extended sizes and widths. I called the rep Steve and he said he’d be out soon to go over the mix with me. We agreed we should expand to some of the tailored shoe styles as well. Steve was great to work with too.

He was a little more conservative than I was in the amounts he’d suggest. I remember one time putting 1’s in front of his suggestions telling “ no guts, no glory”. Ok, I was a bit more colorful, Ask me sometime what I really said…

I did this with all the 80/20 brands. The 80/20 rule as I’ve mentioned in the past are the items that make up 20% of your mix but do 80% of your volume. Rob stressed the narrow and deep philosophy to me so I thought I’d start there. What is the gameplan I kept thinking to myself. This seemed like a good start.

It worked in the last store quite well, but this store had been having really tough business for awhile, so I knew this would be a challenge to figure out.