Emerje wrote:I'm honestly curious how Target keeps getting exclusives from Hasbro in general, not just Transformers. Not only do they badly botch all of their exclusive releases, but they barely give any shelf space to their retail products. Walmart gives most classes multiple pegs and ample shelf space (despite passing on Battle Masters and Micromasters), same for things like G.I.Joe and Ghostbusters. Target, on the other hand, only gives each Transformers class one peg and the shelf space is a disorganized mess, while Ghostbusters get one peg and G.I.Joe gets one peg that's supposed to hold both regular and exclusive figures (and in my case currently full of overflow Ghostbusters figures). For some reason it feels like Target would rather people ask employees to get stuff from the stock room than to actually put stuff on shelves.
Target gets a seat a the exclusives table because Toys R' Us' seat is now empty, as seen by the nearly 1:1 correlation between US target exclusives and canadian TRU, leadfoot included. Just file it away as another casualty of TRU's demise.
Emerje wrote:This is my Target as of last Friday. Too much old Siege stock (mainly that peg full of Battle Masters, a Megatron, and a few Shockwaves), too many things on the wrong shelves (that packed peg of Ghostbusters is supposed to be the 6" G.I.Joe peg), too much stuff on the wrong pegs and shelves (those Cyberverse Deluxes on the left are supposed to be on the right, Voyagers should be shifted over to the right), and that empty space in the middle under the Voyagers is for the Seeker 2 pack that they have never, ever had in stock. Does Target even have dedicated toy department staff? I never see any employees in that section while at Walmart there's always one or two people in the area stocking and arranging shelves.
From my personal retail experience, at Toys R' Us of all places, (Stayed to the bitter end!) there's a combination of factors behind sloppy toy aisles (and retail aisles in general):
1. Customers are lazy and don't take the time to put things back in the right spot after looking at it, or if the changed their mind later. Especially if it's something the kiddo grabbed from three aisles over and only just now showed off only to be rejected. It's always worst in the toy and apparel departments, but it happens in every part of every store. Reshop, which is staff putting things back where they belong, helps with that, but it's time and staff intensive, so it's one of the first things to fall by the wayside when understaffed, especially in departments that don't have perishables.
2.There's a lot of departments in a store, and back of building storage is at a premium. Toys are only one department out of many, so only so much room in the back of house storage area is used for them. The rest is stored at distribution warehouses, who fill up semi trailers and send them out to multiple stores in a large area. The in-system requests for more stock generally occur only when something runs out, but that doesn't matter if the distribution center flat out doesn't have it. Even then, it can take up to two weeks for it to go from restock request to back on the shelves, on a first come first serve basis. If every store runs out, there's only so much product to go around to replace it.
3. If they run things similarly to TRU, which they likely do, since there's only so much wiggle room for different ways to cut corners on staffing to "optimize" payroll to profit ratios, there's 1-2 staff bolted into place at customer service, 1 stapled to the counter in electronics as theft deterrent, 3-5 hot glued to the checkout aisles as cashiers, and everyone else is responsible for every part of the store. There might be some degree of designated department, but that goes out the window the second a customer asks for help. Most places require employees to drop everything to help a customer, even if it takes them to the other side of the store from their current task. All of this is made worse by the fact that, if it takes a shift of 15 people to accomplish everything that needs to be done at high quality, but 10 people can get 95% of it done at barely adequate quality, 9 people are got scheduled and only 7 showed up.
4. Full shelves matter more than diverse shelves. The perception that the store is well stocked matters. If there are a multitude of gaps where GI Joe, Marvel and megablocks should be, the customer's thought process is (in theory) that the store doesn't bother keeping things in stock and so shops elsewhere. But if they instead see wall to wall transformers, bakugan and star wars, then the customer's thought process, if they even notice the lack of Joes, is that those are temporarily out of stock but the store is otherwise well stocked. To use a metaphor, looking busy working is more important than working productively. I think it's bogus, but that's what we were told.
5. While the other reasons are year round, this one only applies to this week. It is two days before Black Friday. There NEEDS to be stock on the shelves Black Friday, especially in the toy department. They
absolutely are holding and have been holding stock to put out Thanksgiving night for the following day. They would rather have disappointing shelves for two weeks, and restock then, than restock now and risk things selling out before black friday and having disappointing shelves then.
All of these reasons feed into and exacerbate each other. If a customer puts something back on the wrong empty peg, an overworked staffer will put out the matching case that's all they have from the stockroom on that peg so it looks full without checking to make sure it's right because they have seven other tasks to do in the next 15 minutes alone because two of the five people on the floor got called up to work register for the next hour due to a rush, but their work still needs doing.
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