Product categories, merchandise mix, plan-o-grams (POGs), discovery sets, OSO (opening stock order), G/B/B (good/better/best), competitive and non-competitive pricing, blind, drop-ship, and...... It all comes down to shopping! Shopping for us and shopping for you (our future customers).
We spent several weeks working on the merchandising layout. Just when we think it's final, the Ace Project Manager calls me today with some new "great" ideas of how we could move this here and this there. Normally the Project Manager would just make this decision on his own, but he very quickly learned that Harry and I don't work that way. Suprising to hear that Harry and I are not the typical new Ace owner conformists isn't it? Our Project Manager has come a long way in a short few months to understand and learn that we aren't the typical new owner and it's a lot easier to just do things the way we want, even though he has over 20 years of experience doing this with Ace and we've been working on it for 18 months. Why would he question us?
Normally the process is that the Project Manager sets up your OSO (see acronym explanation above) based on the size of your store and the merchandising layout. But tell me - what does a guy living in AZ or merchandise experts in Chicago know about selling in an Urban setting like Downtown San Diego? In our opinion, not enough. So we have embarked on what now seems to be an on-going project of choosing product for our OSO. Ace has standard POGs (see acronym explanation above) for every 4' section of the store. But do we really want to be carrying skunk traps, lawn mowers, 15 different kinds of shovels, etc. We need to pick and choose some of the products and we want to carry upgrades of small appliances, lights, bathroom and kitchen accessories, plant containers. Most importantly - I really don't want more than one Crockpot!
To do all this I spend most of my day reviewing POGs on the Ace website, looking at product lists, and watching price points. I never thought I would say that I'm a little tired of shopping. It will all be worth it because we will have a product mix that works great for Downtown and won't have a bunch of product that comes with the standard OSO that we have to end up giving to Big Lots or a $1 store for them to get rid of. Our Project Manager was a little grey when he met me; now I think he may be bald.
By the way - I wish I could tell you how much that hammer cost us that you are going to buy. I'm going to love the hardware business!
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