What are the daily, weekly and monthly merchandising tasks for your store(s) and who is responsible for them?
Have a question for the SpaRetailer panel? Email us at editorial@kendrickcontent.com.
Earl F. Michels, Owner/President
Backyard Leisure
Terre Haute, Indiana; Springfield, Champaign, Peoria and Bloomington, Illinois
We are in the process of updating our retail floors to improve our customer experience.
In addition to our core values that we call The Five 5:
- Faithful
- Innovative
- Visionary
- Empathetic
- 5-Star worthy
Our rallying cry for this year is: dress for success.
What that means to us is that in addition to the common understanding of the phrase, our showrooms are dressed for success — neat, clean, merchandised well and with clear messaging about the current promotions.
Our whole team is involved in this process.
Cole Taylor, Owner
Southern Leisure Spas & Patio
Five Texas locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro, Austin and San Antonio
Merchandising and retail display-related tasks are a bit different in a hot tub store compared to a traditional retail store. At Southern Leisure Spas & Patio, we have found a written list of duties is the most effective way to manage these tasks.
In a hot tub store, you have your standard retail merchandising duties such as shelf stocking, cleaning, price tag updates, inventory counts/adjustments and other point-of-sale-related tasks. In addition, hot tub dealers must ensure hot tubs and swim spas are displayed properly.
In our showrooms, we have anywhere from four to seven hot tubs filled and running. These hottubs are regularly used for wet tests by prospective customers to find just the right model for their size and hydrotherapy needs. The maintenance of water in these spas is extremely important in making sure the customer has the absolute best experience possible.
Our written retail duties checklist is shared among store managers and sales consultants and audited by our general manager monthly. This laminated checklist is posted on the wall out of view of customers but very visible to employees. Store managers are responsible for ensuring all items get done and initialed by the employee who completed the task.
Duties on our retail task list vary from cleaning the restrooms and restocking the shelves to closing the cash register daily and balancing the water in all the wet floor model spas. It takes teamwork to ensure all these duties are completed. Over the years, we have adjusted this list to ensure that if all items are completed on schedule, we will have a beautiful and functional showroom to sell hot tubs and swim spas.