All last week and into Monday of this week the staff worked on bin tags. Our assistant manager, Kevin, who moved out from Chicago arrived on Monday and jumped right into the fray. He has 9 years experience with Home Depot and looks to be a great addition to our team. We hope that he will eventually become the store manager.
While the staff was bin-tagging, Pam was busy ordering product to fill the holes they were finding. She probably spent another $10,000 over the past week on stuff from Simple Human, Umbra and Ace.
Finally, at the end of the day Monday it looks like every section of the store has been tagged. Pam walked the entire store and made a list of items that were missing tags or inventory and by the end of this week we will fill in new tags or order missing merchandise. Here's the store floor plan that the staff was using to keep track of what sections were finished. All colored in nicely! Wait! I think I see three sections that are not highlighted!
Other areas of the store are also shaping up. Employee lockers arrived this week. We got the office cleaned up into a usable space. More storage fixtures came and were assembled. End caps started to come together.
Now that tagging is done, the primary objective for this week is training. One of our favorite Ace employees, Deb Lenhausen, who is the Ace of the Ace Training Dept is in San Diego to give our staff an intense three day course in Ace Customer Service, Selling and Product Knowledge. Pam and I both have been through training classes with her in Chicago and are fortunate to have her helping us with our staff. She'll be back to help us with the Grand Opening as well. (That's on her own time - and we're thankful).
A few more employees joined us this week - the aforementioned Kevin from Chicago, Carlos, John C and Juana. We got stiffed by one guy who was a no-show for his first day of work. Too bad - we thought he would be one of our stars. So, we'll be starting with lucky 13 staff members.
Tuesday thru Thursday this week they are in class with Deb. On Friday we will have training with Benjamin Moore and learn how to use the key cutting machine. On Monday we will have training with the Ace Paint rep and do our final clean-up before opening.
On the subject of tagging - we got hit with our first graffiti last night. Pam wants to review our security camera tapes until we find the bastard. Add it to the "To Do" list. Um, that will be item number 147. Should get to that in June, just about the time the kids will see me again.
We've been trying to buy lots of used stuff and have found great deals on eBay - telephone system, Motorola radios - but, we couldn't find a safe. So we had to pay retail - the $900 safe arrived today.
And, on the subject of cash - here's more cash going out of our pocket... One thing we didn't think about during all the euphoria of getting this great space - our store front faces west and man does that sun blaze in thru those two story windows in the afternoon. So, we are having to spend $6,000 that wasn't budgeted to have window film and roller shades installed. The window film guys came today to do the top windows and doors. The roller shades for the balance of the windows will come in about two weeks.
Just five more days and then we open the doors. We have been getting 10 - 15 people each day trying to come in the store while we have been working. We just need those people and 240 of their friends to come see us each day next week and everything will be just perfect.
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