Friday, February 27, 2015

Monthly Blog: February

Within the month, my mentor, Andrew Johnson, has been telling me the importance of managing money towards the end of the day within a store. Obviously within an organization of any kind, money is the lifeblood. For store management, my mentor went further into depth and talked to me about how he would every month find what certain types of merchandise was sold and tried to find more of it, teaching me the importance of supply and demand. He told me that when he found that an item was selling really well, that he would do all in his power to showcase it closer to the store entrance to get people intrigued. It was extremely informational because I always knew the concept of "sell what's hot," but I never knew how people in retail figured out "what's hot."

The receipt above is a daily receipt that shows all sales of all department items. Example, all of the home furniture we sold pulled in a cool $445.00, which tells us that lots of people are eager to buy our furniture aside from other goods. Based on that knowledge, all of our deliveries on the truck which contain furniture gets priority on being taken out to the store floor. Additionally, this receipt gives the store a general rough estimate on what kind of money that comes in on a daily, which is essential to managing money over time. Keeping track of what you sell and collecting data on what sells the most is extremely vital in the retail management world, for making money is the name of the game.

The above is a spreadsheet on how much real estate (store space) that each department takes up. Getting your products out and making more space for newer goods to come in is essential. Out with the old and in with the new. If something takes up too much square footage in your store, then you have to sell it at a reduced rate to remedy the problem of product build up.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Blog 16: Answer #2

1.  What is your EQ?

What is the most effective way to manage a store during the busiest hours of the day?

2.  What is your first answer? (In complete thesis statement format)

Answer #1: The most effective way to manage a store during the busiest hours of the day is by practicing efficient prioritization.

3.  What is your second answer? (In complete thesis statement format)

Answer #2: Ensure that your employees are always engaged in their work and trust them to where you can let them properly utilize their own skills.

4.  List three reasons your answer is true with a real-world application for each.
  1. Answer #1 deals with the activities needed to actually run a store. Example, you, as a manager, must learn where you need to position your employees/your attention. You must be able to use your discretion as to what kind of objectives you need to accomplish within the store at the right time. Ask yourself: are my customers satisfied? Are the aisles full of merchandise clear and presentable? Should I go do this, or go and do that?
  2. Answer #2 makes sure that employees aren't getting bored and feeling like they are working for no personal purpose. Employees like to feel like they are doing a helpful amount of work for whatever cause/store/organization. Employee engagement can be extremely tricky, but based off of research from a sizable amount of authors within the field of leadership, a manager must trust their employees to a point where they could work independently on their own without a manager having to come every 30 minutes to check up on them. Employees that are self-sufficient and don't need a manager to micromanage them makes running a store so much easier. (Manager could tend to other things, such as admin objectives)
  3. For Answer #1, a simple, real world scenario could pan out like this. Say within your store, you have a box of glass fall and shatter into a million pieces within a certain store aisle, and all of your employees are either tending to customers, on a lunch break, or unloading supply trucks. At this point, you, as a manager, must make a choice. Where do I reassign my employees? What's the most logical choice in my situation?
  4. For Answer #2, a real world scenario could play out like this. Your employees are working, albeit either very slowly or in a mood where they just appear to be unhappy. If your employees are unhappy and customers physically see that, then it can make the customer uncomfortable, especially if that certain employee is lending a hand and answering questions. 
5.  What printed source best supports your answer?

The following printed sources (all are books) best represents my answer(s): 
  1. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Leadership Fast-Track
  2. The Virgin Way by Mr. Richard Branson (CEO/Founder of the Virgin Company)
  3. Straight Talk on Leadership Icons and Idiots by Former Vice Chairman of General Motors, Bob Lutz
6.  What other source supports your answer? 
  1. Managing People & Performance: Fast Track to Success by David Ross
7.  Tie this together with a  concluding thought.

Managing a store and servicing your customers is a lot of work to carry out, especially when your store is having a busy day. Your employees are your most valuable resources. Treat them well, respect them, let them know their skills are appreciated, and give them the trust and independence to do work the way they want to do it.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

1. Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 Hours?

My Independent Component 2 will revolve around the topics of both employee training and teamwork. As a store manager, it is critical to teach your employees how to do tasks around the workplace step-by-step so that way both boss and worker are on the same page, and there's no confusion when it comes to how to do work around the workplace. Teamwork is also definitely an important aspect of store management, due to the work of two being better than the work of one. You have to be able to efficiently utilize your manpower and manipulate it to meet the store's needs.

When working at my mentorship, we have new people come in to volunteer occasionally who pretty much have no familiarity with the mechanics of our ReStore. During the summer, I had a time where teenagers used to come in and do work for volunteer hours, and I would be the main man to train them, ensuring they new about store policy and methods. I find sometimes that even adults come into the store not knowing what to do, and they kind of shadow me in a way in order to get a feel for the store. After the training, teamwork can then be truly utilized because workers and volunteers are on the same page, tying into how important it is for a manager and an employee to have the same viewpoint.

2. Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.

The 30 hours of evidence would be shown by mostly photographs, as rarely do I ever get the time window to film activities due to our state of the store (always have to be working.) Photographs with both team members and people who are volunteering or are staff members would be taken and I would explain them on my blog more in depth, both covering what type of training I did with the employee or teamwork. I feel both photographs and video are the most logical because there is no true "test," "essay." or "transcript" when it comes to store management.

3. Explain how this component will help you explore your topic more in depth.

This Independent Component helps to explore my topic more in depth by showing that the manager has to train his employees for full effectiveness and quality of work around the store. Additionally, it lessens confusion because the employee has been hands on trained by the manager. The employee doesn't need to ask questions to the manager because they would already know, thus eliminating the need of the manager stopping his work to answer other questions. During a busy store day, it's paramount that employees know every task and is prepared to answer every question whilst following the daily agenda given by the manager. The whole idea is to make sure no confusion is in the air when the store's lines are full and customers are constantly asking questions.

4. Post a log in your Senior Project Hours Link and label it "Independent Component 2" log. 

Done.






Friday, February 6, 2015

Independent Component #1 - The Receiving Dock Clean-Up


  • LITERAL
    • (a.) I, Diego Luna, affirm that I have completed my independent component which requires 32 hours of work.
    • (b.) The book, Retail in Detail, helped to perform my independent component due to the following points that were brought up in the book: logistics and organization of product.
    • My mentor, Andrew Johnson, had let me use his store and take pictures in order to document progress of organizing the receiving dock.
    • (c.) Please reference my updated Senior Project Hours log for a glimpse of work performed.
    • (d.) I, Diego Luna, have performed over a 3 month period tasks that are beneficial to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in terms of organizing product and making sure that newer products can come in with minimal clutter in the way. More exacting tasks and detail shall be explained further below.
  • INTERPRETIVE
Going down to the meat of the potato in terms of introduction here, store management is quite challenging to do in practice, juggling many everyday tasks at once and prioritizing them to fit your current circumstance and situation. As a store manager, you must stay on top of your employees, ensuring they are being productive without being too overbearing on them. Additionally, you must be alert and at the ready in case a customer wishes to speak with you whether it would be voicing a complaint or asking something about your organization/establishment that only you can solely answer. Those two tasks are extremely paramount and the bare basics of management. Customer service AND leadership (making sure your employees are working at a satisfactory level) are the most frequently prioritized aspects of store management. However, there are some behind the scenes work that needs to be done which ties into the two following words: logistics and organization. Now, above states that both customer service AND leadership are generally more refined than organization and logistics. Judging by books I've read and articles published, the authors put a greater emphasis on the former rather than the latter. As a disclaimer, however, the authors don't at all consider logistics and organization as "unimportant tasks."

With the intro being out of the way, I sought out for my independent component to do something both helpful and informational (for myself) for the Habitat for Humanity PV ReStore. It all actually started in the summer when there was one day where our products just couldn't be moved out of the receiving room because it was just a tornado of product and you couldn't safely get things out of there using one person. Just imagine this: you're an employee in a store. You have customers going around and asking for assistance and questions about merchandise your store has for sale. Immediately you go help the customers only to find out that now your truck delivery of new product comes in and now you have to backtrack to clean the receiving room in order to unload that truck and fill up the receiving room yet again! Keep in mind that the truck driver is also now behind on his deliveries because he can't unload his truck of delivered goods. Now your supply line is backed up. After hours of work, you get the problem fixed, but now you think to yourself, "wow, how can we prevent something like that from happening again?"

Below is an example of our old receiving room and what I had previously planned to organize and clean out for my independent component. As you can see and observe it's quite a mess towards the back of the doorway. You couldn't even walk inside. Keep in mind this was during the summer when I took a snapshot of it. Now to the left is our receiving room improved a little bit. There was a time we had another volunteer other than myself over the summer and we both got things cleaned out of the walkway for the most part. Same room, just I was able to walk through and take pictures. Of course, it definitely isn't perfect, but there was a walkway and it wasn't bad for only two volunteers working on it. The summer tended to strike our store down with the disease of "under-staff."



Our receiving room changed to a different spot and upon hearing of the "Independent Component," I felt ambitious to clean our new receiving room and do it for a project. It was quite easy to document and it was something I knew how to do quite well (judging by the summer work.) Pictures below will detail the process of how clean we- both the staff and myself- made the new receiving room.


This was the receiving room on Day 1 (1-7-15) when we started to switch from the old one that we had. It was in the corner of the store and it just felt easier to unload products off of the trucks there. Of course, this is also where we stored lots of product that couldn't be loaded into the old backroom, thus gathering dust and taking up important real-estate space. It was quite a mess and would be a significant challenge to clean up, but the management staff were determined to set a goal for the volunteers and staff members to get that space tidied up. So we answered the call of duty and got started.

This was the receiving room on Day 2 (1-8-15) with a tiny bit of progress made. Not extremely evident at first, but we did get some stuff out and on top of that we had more stuff coming in throughout the week. Some of the stuff we moved out into a more secure place involves a giant, wooden, dining table set and plywood along with a large stack of sinks that were formerly plastic wrapped. All of these items were priced and put out in a presentable manner on the store floor. As you can see in the back, as I snapped this shot, a staff member was moving the leftover cardboard boxes to recycling, clearing trash, while my job was to price items and place them on the store floor.


Now, on Day 3 (1-9-15), the staff members and I had cleaned it up till this point where the day was wrapping up for myself. We had a steady walkway flowing and more products just kept coming in on the truck. As you can see in the back, the truck was emptied out by myself and others, thus causing more products to come in. My mentor said I couldn't take pictures until I was completely done unloading all of the items so this is AFTER our pick-up came. Still, making great progress.

In the interest of saving loads of time and explanation of the same cycle happening over and over in teams of cleaning the receiving area, our back room got cluttered yet again when I came back to work on the 14th of January. It really never got cleaner than the above until the very last day of the Independent Component #1 phase. This is primarily due to management putting a large priority on customers and cleanliness of the store floor during the days that we were busy. Lots of staff members and myself had to do things such as organizing the aisles of our store, assembling set pieces of dining room tables together, and sorting through the assortment of church pews we received.

    
This is ties in with store management and organization, despite the minor setback on my main project. Customers enjoy uniformity, organization, and aisles were various items are extremely easy to find. Plus, a lot of these items were priced after cleaning out the receiving area.

Now, fast forwarding to the two last days of my Independent Component #1 work. On January 27th, the receiving room was still cluttered and receiving items which is regular stuff that happens at the ReStore. (Note: the woman in the red shirt is my mentor, Sara Timberlake.) From the left we can see there are couches, pieces of wood, carts of other items in buckets, which are mostly materials such as nails, PVC piping, and smaller items along those lines. To the right is the picture of the same receiving room at the end of the day when other staff members and I cleaned it all up considerably. After an extremely lengthy process, the receiving room finally had a bit more room to maneuver and store items.





















  • APPLIED
This Independent Component #1 helped to understand the necessity of having days where you have your employees make sure that all of the behind the scenes tasks and aspects of the store are dealt with. When managing a store during the busiest hours of the day, you really can't afford to have a time where the main receiving area of your store is not navigable. Your supply lines of product needs to be clear so that your store can have a better flow of goods, thus generating healthier profits.

At one of the days I was at my mentorship, we had a time within the store where the back was so congested that the delivery truck has thrown behind almost an hour back because the staff members had no room to unload the products. It was an extreme mess trying to sort it all out, especially when you're carrying items like washing machines, refrigerators, and dining room table sets out of there, but luckily the job was done close to the end of the day. We haven't had a bad day like that in a while so it makes life easier when everything on your receiving area is running smoothly and people can properly do their regular jobs instead of having to run to the back and get tasks done in a pinch.

Clearly, the best time of the day to work on store maintenance needs such as this would be during slower hours of store-time. Even when there aren't customers to service or sell merchandise to, there's always something employees could be doing. Remember that the store will never stop for you.