In blog 68 I talked about leadership direction and people placement. In this blog I wanted to talk about doing your best work.

So kids shoes was a whole different world. This department definitely didn’t get the love Women’s shoes received. I’m not saying from the store manager but more about budgets, ads stuff like that. And with that, the volume was smaller and so was the open to buy. But it was a great starting point for me to learn about the art of buying. 

So in talking with seasoned buyers like Pam, in the kids world, they would do fun things to bring people in.

Shoe tying seminar

One such event was the shoe tying seminar. We would invite a dozen kids to the department with their parents. The would all sit in chairs in a row facing the instructor. The parents would stay off to the side. “Over, under, around and through,
Meet Mr. Bunny Rabbit, pull and through.”. We would just poems or songs to help them remember. It involved a lot of practice tries. It was a lot of fun and we would give a “Nordie” stuffed toy at the end.

Ked’s painting

How do you spruce up a plain white sneaker? You hire an artist and have a keds painting. We would advertise that an artist was going to be in the store and people could come in and purchase a pair of plain white sneakers and an artist would paint a design of their choice on the sneaker. It was very well received, in fact the customers would have to come back later to pick up the finished product.

Both of these events brought people in and gave us the opportunity to capture a new  customer to our personal books. We would keep tract of the child’s sizes and based on the growth we could call to suggest a new fitting

Doing your best work

“Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” — Teddy Roosevelt*

*This quote Originated from the battle of San Juan hill. The men wanted more guns,more men and more supplies