Ace is the Place!

Work continues on product placement - about 70% of the merchandise is now in the store. By mid next week we should be up to 95% with the balance to come from purchases we will make at next week's Ace Trade Show in Las Vegas. Ace has two shows per year - Spring and Fall. The Spring show is focused on Trim-A-Tree and the Fall Show is for Lawn & Garden. Of course, they have all the regular vendors at both shows. They also have lots of training opportunities. We are so burnt out on training - we are not going to take advantage of any of the offerings.

Benjamin Moore delivered their color chip rack today along with some other decor. The BenMoore paint shipment has been delayed due to some paperwork issues, but it should arrive in about 10 days.

We are having an issue with product arriving dusty - apparently from sitting in the warehouse for too long. What does that mean? Have we picked the wrong product???? A lot of the stuff is high-end like this Dyson vacuum that came in need of a good DustBuster.

We visit the store three of four times each day to review progress with the visual merchandisers and to address any concerns they have. Here's Pam trying to help Bill figure out the Westinghouse lighting display. What an ugly piece of...

We started making offers to employees today. We'll have 5 cashiers and 10 sales associates to start. So far Brooke, Alyssa K, Alissa R, Nikki, John W, Matthew, Juana, and Sarah are all on board. We should hear back from the others tomorrow and we have three second interviews scheduled for Saturday.

First Employee Hired

We hired our first employee today - Kevin Fink - who will be our Assistant Manager. Kevin currently works for Home Depot in Chicago where he is the Kitchen Design / Appliance department supervisor. He has been with Home Depot for 7 years and has worked in most of the departments and was also at an Expo store for awhile. He has been planning to move to San Diego and saw our ad on Craig's List when he was searching for job opportunities. Good timing for both of us.

Another Ace truck arrived this morning and the store is full of green totes of merchandise. Two more visual merchandisers came on board today and they are quickly putting up the new merchandise. Our most nostalgic department - automotive - is now set. It's only 8' of display - I guess that is actually a section, not a department.

Check out the glove section - first of all, why do we need so many different kinds of gloves? It's a bit ridiculous. Secondly, what is with all the pink gloves? The brand name on some of them is "Tuff Chix". I think Pam will verify that Tuff Chix don't wear pink gloves.

Looking Like a Store

It has been a busy week of fixture installation and product placement. The fixture install crew led by Bill and Nathan started on Monday and by Friday we had a real store ready for product. While the fixture installation was in progress, the electrical crew finished up with power for the cashier counters, paint counter and service desk. The burglar alarm was installed and the telephone and computer cabling was finished. Friday was the final walk-thru with our general contractor and we received our final inspection approvals from both the electrical inspector and the structural inspector. We are now good to go with the city.

Friday night we turned on the outside sign. It's all very real now. On Saturday, while Pam and I did another round of 35 interviews, a truck arrived from the Ace warehouse with a full load of product to be placed. Our crew of five visual merchandisers starting placing product on Saturday morning and by Sunday afternoon various departments were beginning to take shape. While we were at the store on Saturday, lots of people stopped by to "cheer us on". It's been fun hearing how excited people are to have Ace opening downtown. One guy drove by honking his horn and yelling out the window "Ace is The Place!"

On Sunday Pam and I built the Patio Living area fixtures while Bill our fixture expert started to install decor - including end cap signs and aisle signs. We also received delivery of a bunch of specialty displays that we bought at Circuit City's liquidation sale. Thanks Sunny for getting us the super deal.

Fixture Progress

Tuesday was Day 2 of the fixture installation. All of the freestanding floor fixtures were set-up and the perimeter fixtures were attached to the wall.

Tuesday's drama had to do with anchoring the fixtures. No one could decide what the depth of the fastener should be. The fixture company recommends a 3 1/2" fastener, but due to electrical conduit buried in the concrete floor the fastener cannot be that long.

At first we thought we might just check the as-built drawings or x-ray the floor so that we would be able to miss the utility chase that contains the conduit. Then we received these photos from the building contractor showing the spaghetti bowl of conduit and no utility chase. And they call themselves professionals?

Architect, structural engineer, general contractor, fixture company, fixture installer - all were asked what should be done and no one would make a recommendation that they would be held too. They all had an opinion, but no one was willing to commit that the inspector would accept it.

Wednesday morning Pam and I listened to all the opinions again, plus got a seismic engineer's opinion. Ultimately, we chose to go with the fastener that the fixture installer recommended. He's supposed to be the professional, right?

Our first Ace truck arrived today. There was no room in the store for the product because of all the fixture installation going on - so the pallets sat outside. As Pam told them when they unloaded the truck, "welcome to our life." This is pretty much how it will be for us every week when the Ace truck arrives to replenish the store.

The first visual merchandiser arrived on Tuesday. The visual merchandisers will put the product on the shelves once the fixture installation is complete. Today he helped with the fixture install and also started putting up peg hooks. The rest of the VMs arrive on Thursday.

There are bound to be a few surprises at each step, right? Well, one of the fixture surprises is the "cherry" (it's brown) laminate that was sent for one section of fixtures. Neither Pam or I remembered ordering it, but apparently we did so we let them install it. Now that it is installed, I think it looks bad, sort of like a 1960's den, so on Thursday we'll have it changed to solid white.

Recruiting and Fixtures Arrive

Saturday was our first day of interviews. From over 300 applications, we invited 42 people to come in for an interview at the store. 38 of them showed up (more than we expected) and it was an interesting day. Pam did all the hard work, interviewing each person - all I did was greet them, give them a test and some paperwork to read over and then stare at them and make notes like: "funny hair", "old with eye twitch", "wears all black - is that mascara?".

From the 38 we have 14 that will be invited back for a second interview next Saturday. We will also bring in 20 more potential candidates for a first look. Hopefully by the end of next weekend, we will have 15 good employees on the team.

Today was the big day for moving to the next phase. When Pam arrived at the store before 7am, there were two semi-trailers full of fixtures waiting for us. Of course, the labor didn't show up until 8am (and clearly from the picture below you can see that they don't really want to work), so Pam had to jockey the pallet jack for awhile. Should of gotten a picture of that!

By end of the day the perimeter fixtures were all in place. Still a day's work to level, anchor and finish before they start on the floor fixtures. All of the counters should be in place by the end of the day Tuesday.

Bulbs!

Sylvania light bulbs arrived today! And, of course that is not the end of the story. We ordered 146 bulbs. They shipped us 90. And the Cooper Lighting God said, "Let there be half light."

The general contractor did their final cleaning today. Except for a few odd items left on the punch list, they are basically finished with the tenant improvements. Today they installed the corrugated shroud around the parking garage vent that is in our patio living area. The electrical contractor has powered up all the lights and some even have bulbs. Our sound system was installed yesterday.

And product keeps showing up. The first of six semi-trailers of merchandise from the Ace warehouse will come next Friday.

We have received over 300 responses to our job postings on Craig's List, Jobing.com and Monster.com. Tomorrow we will have an InterviewFest - 42 scheduled interviews in 6 hours - non-stop. I feel sorry for anyone after the 30th interview - they have no chance of getting a job with us.

Store fixtures arrive on Monday - the beginning of the next phase! I can barely remember when we were trying to make the fixture decision...