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August 1998 |
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| Maintenance Will Protect Your Investment |
by Stephen J. Alexander
President, Automotive In-Store Marketing |
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| Stephen J. Alexander |
WANNA KNOW THE one simple secret which could keep your store the way you want it — profitable, and head-and-shoulders above the competition?
It’s not design, not signage, not promotion, not merchandising and not even the sophisticated inventory control system today’s competitive retail market demands. And, while category management is the newest mandatory element for competing in today’s automotive parts and accessory selling world, the secret is not that profitable, cutting-edge partnership either.
The secret is maintenance. Maintenance protects your investment — your investment in your market plan, in your inventory, in your new store design, in repositioning your stores to compete with your neighbors.
My point is easily made again if I transpose it to the words used by our friends in the chemical car care appearance products business. They say, “You spent all this money on this vehicle, and you walk away from cleaning it?”
The same is true when it comes to your stores. After the major investments you’ve made in money and time to design and stock your store perfectly, it’s foolish not to spend the effort needed to keep your investment looking its best.
Don’t trash your investment in your stores. Clean-up. Yes, it’s mundane. But, professional guys and gals, housekeeping is not a dirty word. Housekeeping is the magic treatment.
Housekeeping, when it comes to stores, has two aspects. One is cleanliness, obviously; the other is merchandising.
Housekeeping is one of the in-store marketing disciplines which doesn’t stand alone. It cannot be separated from its siblings — design, graphics, merchandising, installation and training.
Maintenance is the process of coordinating the implementation of revising, updating and installing new merchandising.
A poorly maintained store is a poorly merchandised store. When signs begin to look old or outdated, when merchandise is not straightened, when floors are not swept or vacuumed, you demean your business. You lower your image. When you have beautiful products in an unkept environment, you have decreased the value of every item you sell. Whether you realize it or not, you have lowered the value and credibility of your products to the consumer. You jeopardize your perceived expert status. And you tempt your floor and counter personnel to lose respect for you and the store.
If customers think “what you see is what you get,” woe to the store manager who lets housekeeping take less-than-top priority in daily operations.
This goes for operations based on low pricing, too. Low prices do not equal low maintenance. The stronger your maintenance, the stronger your low-price image. Trust me on this.
When today’s customers do not find the pristine environment they demand wherever they spend money, they won’t come back if there is a competing store where they can spend their automotive budgets. So, unless you’re the only game in town or within driving distance, you’d best to mind your shelves and floors.
What should you do?
Develop a housekeeping process. This is daily duty. Assign tasks and times when they are to be performed, and see that some of those rotate among the store’s employees.
Tasks such as what, you wonder?
- Picking up stuff from the floor, and sweeping the floor. (By the way, in-aisle obstacles are not only an inconvenience to your customers, impeding your carefully-planned traffic flow, they’re also fodder for lawsuits.)
- Straightening merchandise on shelves and endcaps, and making sure everything faces front. Paying special attention to the bottom shelves.
- Taking broken packages off display.
- Straightening signs and merchandisers. Making sure they’re current.
- Making sure all light bulbs and fixtures function.
- Emptying the trash and getting it out of the store.
- Washing windows.
Take a good look at your store with paper and pencil in hand. Make your maintenance task list with an eagle eye. Enlist your employees’ help in this. Reward your employees for adding items to the list, and again for performing housekeeping chores. Post the list where every employee sees it every day. Make this housekeeping thing important. Make day-in day-out cleaning part of your corporate culture. Understand that what your customers see turns into what YOU get in your cash drawer.
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And, doing the same things for your store’s exterior areas: picking up trash and sweeping the parking and entry way, etc.
Boring? Yes, but it’s gotta be done. Before the store opens for the day and during the operational hours.
How can you make this happen “24-7,” as the kids say? Post your housekeeping task list in a prominent place where your employees see it every day — like the signs you’ve spotted in restaurants reminding employees to wash their hands before they leave the restroom, or the time check chart for cleaning that same restroom.
Spiff up your store maintenance with a program which brings a little pleasure. How about adding incentives to employees for doing the “same ole, same ole” maintenance chores every day? A little reward now and then goes a long way toward making store maintenance an important part of your store’s operations — a part of your company culture.
Stephen J. Alexander, president of Automotive In-Store Marketing, is a member of Aftermarket Business’ Retail Advisory Board. To reach him at his Sanibel Island, Florida headquarters, call 239-395-9203, or e-mail, salexander@autoinstore.com.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE:"Reprinted with permission from Aftermarket Business, August, 1998, page 84. Copyright by Advanstar Communications, Inc. Advanstar Communications, Inc. retains all rights to this material." To subscribe to Aftermarket Business, call 1-218-723-9477 or email fulfill@superfill.com.
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