Stock Room Renovation

Out of sight out of mind. That is the philosophy that many have when it comes to the stock room, but a clean stock room can help boost sales.

Think of it this way. A customer is looking for a size 10 bootcut levi. The sales person must climb over boxes blocking shelves, root through various piles spastically spread out of the shelves. This takes time and often the item in question gets overlooked until it is time to clear the stock room when new clearance is marked down.  Now the same customer is looking for the same pair of pants. The employee walks into the stock room, locates the section where the pants are and can easily scan the shelf for the item.

Keeping the stock rooms clean may seem daunting, but can be easily done. First the best way to start is by identifying how to break the stock room up. Does everything from the women’s department go into it or just women’s career and pants. Decide if the area needs to be broken up by sub department (juniors, plus, career, etc…), by product (jeans, t-shirts, sweaters), by brand or whatever works for your store. From personal experience I had two stock rooms to deal with for one department (one behind the register and one on the other side of the store). To make it easy for my employees I separated the stockrooms by demand. Since junior, seasonal, and pants were checked for the most in my store that is what went into the stock room behind the register.

Hours can be hard to come by when sales are down, so pick a time of the day (usually early morning) and get an employee who is good with direction and needs little supervision to ‘sort’ the stock room. Pulling them for a hour or two for a day can put a big dent in the project. Also try to stick with the same two or three people doing the cleaning. This way they know the expectations and have a good process going that doesn’t need to be interrupted by throwing in someone new.

Although this is the most time consuming part to separate everything it is important to train everyone in the department about where things are, the process of putting things away, and how to keep it clean. Even my most critical staff members were converted to believers when the saw with ease how they could find items and took it upon themselves to speak to anyone who messed with it.

The next step is to stage an area for clearance. Each time mark downs happen pull someone to pull all clearance items to one area in the stock room. This way as clearance items sell down pulling out more to fill the rack takes seconds.

Keep another area segregated for “the mess.” Yes, it happens. There are days when the wrap desk back up and the fitting room explodes. Keeping the mess contained to these areas is a big no-no. Get a cart, a rolling rack, anything and fill it with the over flow. Pull that into an out of the way area in the stock room to keep it out of the employees way and out of the customers sight.

The last set is training. The most important thing to do is walk the stock room with employees and set expectations. Show them where things are and let them know that keeping it clean is now part of the recovery process. Most importantly show them the “mess” area. Set the expectation of when it’s dead in the fitting room they work the rack there or every morning during recovery someone is responsible for the rack. Usually this is the responsibility of the fitting room person.

Keeping stock rooms clean should become as high of a priority as recovery of a store. Remember this is a continual process that makes fill much easier.