Blog #155  I talked about more changes in Valley Fair. In this blog I want to talk about more Nordstrom changes and a trip to Vegas.

In the last blog I talked about a few changes we had in the Valley Fair store and the very next week Tom gets promoted to the Chicago area. Monte is named as our new RMM. I was familiar with who he was because he had been with the company for so long. He had a good reputation so I was looking forward to getting to know him better.

Terry’s contest

Terry our Nickels rep calls me to talk about our business being so good. He wanted to have a Nickels contest and had a bunch of money to give out to the employees. I made another one of my infamous charts to track everyone’s progress and Terry was going to come in for a trunk show and give everyone $5 a pair when they sold one of his shoes. He gave out a lot of money that day.

The contest board tracked everyone’s sales and there were prizes for the top people. They would get to pick and envelope and the prize would be written down inside. We were giving a big screen tv, cash and a trip to Vegas with yours truly. The prize would pay for their room and expense costs.  They would also get to attend the WSA shoe show and give me input on what they thought.

Contest Vegas winner

Mostafa ended up winning the WSA trip so he traveled with me to the next show. We shared a room at the Luxor which seemed cool at first since it’s in the shape of a Pyramid and Mostafa is Egyptian. Problem was a slanted room and two tall guys in a room like this, was a little challenging. We had a lot of fun together regardless.

He walked the show with me which usually involved an appointment every hour all day long. It was a grind but he got to see how we do it and enjoyed the experience. A typical day at the shoe show would be say 6-7 appointments. We would go to each appointment and meet the rep at the booth. The rep would take us to a table or area where we could see the new line and take notes. We usually would start the meeting with how the brand was doing, Ask for discounts and RA’s on slow moving merchandise and talk about co-op opportunities.

Then we would look at the line. Each brand was a little different but would go something like this. The rep would lay styles out by either classification, heel height or even the type of last it was built on. It really depended on how the brand liked to show the line. After the line was laid out we would categorize by A styles, B Styles and C styles.

ABC

A styles = must haves

B styles = Next group to get too and mostly styles to round out the collection.

C styles = want to get too but last. Usually the window dressing type styles, nice to have but not the priority.

To remember what styles we laid out, the reps would usually write down all the info and send to me after the show. I usually would make notes on the line sheet and highlight colors and A,B,C notes for my reference.

Mostafa had great input on a lot of the styles we saw too so that was helpful to me as well. I don’t think most employees grasp what goes into a buy so it was great experience for him to see it in action. We caught a Seinfeld show later that night which was pretty funny.

Nordstrom was going through a lot of jobs being consolidated so that was the buzz at the show if the shoe areas would be affected as well. We would find out in the coming months.