MEGATHREAD Hang Me (The Softlines Thread)

[Doglover89]

Trying to compare my store to others; If you work in an A volume store with a pretty big softlines dept, how many zones are you getting each night? I've been coming in 5;30-close and getting inf hl, inf sl, boys, girls, int, & hosiery. I just feel so overwhelmed with the amount of work and wondering if I'm being overworked or if I'm just weak.

A volume here. That would be considered a huge zone in my store. The closers come in at anytime between 3 and 6:30 and we're scheduled til 11:30. Typically one person has RTW, one has jewelery, accessories, intimates, active wear, girls, and infants hardlines, and one has mens, boys, shoes, and baby softlines, plus an FRO who helps out with RTW. If we have a fourth zoner, she gets all of infants and sometimes boys. I agree with @RightArm you need to watch your time and how much you time you're on a register. Just gotta do the best you can.

 

[Yetive]

I'm not sure who decided it was a good idea to make the bikini tops with the neck ties going through casings to tie at the back, but it wasn't.

 

[Deli Ninja]

I'm not sure who decided it was a good idea to make the bikini tops with the neck ties going through casings to tie at the back, but it wasn't.

And yet we get them or something just as inconvenient every year.

 

[Anelmi]

I've been doing some softlines shifts recently and my strategy is similar. Work from the outside in. But the clearance tables? Especially those in B/G/I? Fugheddaboudit. What a flippin' nightmare.

 

[Yetive]

Pull the unfolded shirts to be hung.

 

[RightArm]

Pull the unfolded shirts to be hung.

Our FROs are trained to hang clearance whenever it ends up in the gobacks... so they tend to get hung over time. If it's not a lot of folded hanging it is good but if there's tons of it, hanging space for clearance can be just as difficult to deal with.

 

[graffiti]

So my store has had the softlines rollout (wherein the softlines side of the truck is handled by SL and not flow anymore) for a while now and it's such a nightmare. How well the process goes seems to go back and forth based on how much SL we get in on a truck (it's a high SL vol store in general, but we'll go through stretches where trucks are managable sizes, like 6-7 pallets instead of 10-12). We have one TM for breakout/pulling autos that comes in with the flow team then 2-3 TMs who come in at staggered times after the store opens to push/backstock. But none of the leadership has really committed to the process; the SL TLs are still bitter about having to take it on and routinely pull the pushers away to do other tasks even when we're buried in breakout/push, and when it gets bad they say "Good, let it get bad so they'll give it back to flow." The ETL SF is terrible with communication and constantly changes his priorities for the push team instead of letting them find their groove, and the ETL LOG is understanding of our issues but doesn't really escalate it until it's out of control, and honestly lowkey treats it a bit like a p*ssing contest with the ETL SF.

We have 5-6 trucks a week this time of year and only our small team is expected to do everything (plus all the salesfloor/brand/FR whims of the day), so when things are heavy we generally use up all our available hours for the week just trying to keep up, and anything we can't manage snowballs until it's bad enough for them to finally throw more payroll and extra help towards it. It once got so bad our DTL was even involved in helping push and catch up for a day.

I've heard the same thing come from market TMs with regard to the consumables rollout. It's so frustrating how my store is letting these processes fall through the cracks.

 

[Doglover89]

But none of the leadership has really committed to the process; the SL TLs are still bitter about having to take it on and routinely pull the pushers away to do other tasks even when we're buried in breakout/push, and when it gets bad they say "Good, let it get bad so they'll give it back to flow."

Let me first say that the idea of a softlines rollout scares me. But then there's our SLTL. She seems to quite like the idea of the dedicated market team, and wants us to have a dedicated SL team as well. I think my ETL SF would probably enjoy it as well. Curious to hear more about this rollout, and if its a district thing or will become company wide. Haven't heard a thing about this. Does your store have the 2.0 thing? Some in my district have it, so maybe they're the ones who will get this rollout?

 

[Yetive]

Everything old is new again. This is how softlines used to work. 2 breaking out, then, usually TLS, pushing z-racks and carts. We did have a z pusher too sometimes. And for a short time, we had cosmetics in Accessories and we pushed that too.

 

[thechadness04]

I'm excited for the rollout. However, in my store only the z-racks are being handled by the SL team/ SLTL and myself (VMTL). Flow team will still push everything with an actual location. They scheduled it so the SL openers spend the first 2 hours of their shift on truck days pushing z-racks alongside myself or the SLTL. I hope that this will save us a ton of hours when it comes to remerching and setting adjacencies and reduce the amount of backstock.... cause our flow team is the laziest when it comes to pushing hang.

 

[graffiti]

Curious to hear more about this rollout, and if its a district thing or will become company wide. Haven't heard a thing about this. Does your store have the 2.0 thing?

I believe we're set to get the 2.0 thing within the next couple of months. It seems like around here it's mostly the ULV/LV stores who have the rollout in motion but our store wanted a jump on it. I've heard it's been very successful in other stores but it also seems they have leadership willing to commit resources to make sure it's getting done every day and not everyone pretending someone else will swoop in and fix it.

They scheduled it so the SL openers spend the first 2 hours of their shift on truck days pushing z-racks alongside myself or the SLTL. I hope that this will save us a ton of hours when it comes to remerching and setting adjacencies and reduce the amount of backstock.... cause our flow team is the laziest when it comes to pushing hang.

I think it makes a lot of sense doing it that way! When we had flow handling it that was our fallback solution for big trucks and tight hours. Most of our flow SL TMs left the process after the change, though, because of the drastic shift in scheduling times. So it's being handled by SL TMs now, but the (entire) rest of the SL team asked never to be scheduled under it because "it's too much work," so that's another thing that makes it rough to get help in my store.

 

[Yetive]

I'm excited for the rollout. However, in my store only the z-racks are being handled by the SL team/ SLTL and myself (VMTL). Flow team will still push everything with an actual location. They scheduled it so the SL openers spend the first 2 hours of their shift on truck days pushing z-racks alongside myself or the SLTL. I hope that this will save us a ton of hours when it comes to remerching and setting adjacencies and reduce the amount of backstock.... cause our flow team is the laziest when it comes to pushing hang.

I don't think it's fair to call them lazy. They don't set adjacencies nor remerchandise. If you are doing your job, merchandise is in another place every time they work! Add to this that they may be worried about "messing up" by putting something in the wrong place and you can see that it might take them longer.

And yes, it does work great. I hated it when we gave z's to flow. So much easier to just merchandise as you push. You will love it.

 

[Doglover89]

This whole thing sounds interesting. My store is high volume, and I'd be interested to see how it would work out. However, on the whole our SL flow tms are better workers than our regular softlines folks. The flow ladies better stick around if we implement this.

 

[RightArm]

Not sure how this roll out would work in our store under present conditions. We don't have the SL manpower in the early morning shifts to push the truck. Our SL TMs don't understand adjacency setting any better than our flow team so having them push racks under current circumstances would be worse not better than flow. If our VMTL was versed enough in SL and present along with both our TLs to do it... hrmm... right now I just don't see how it would work without them hiring more TMs to train to the task. Guess we'll see what happens. We are heading for the 2.0 reboot somewhere in the middle of this year so...

 

[SFSFun]

Not sure how this roll out would work in our store under present conditions. We don't have the SL manpower in the early morning shifts to push the truck. Our SL TMs don't understand adjacency setting any better than our flow team so having them push racks under current circumstances would be worse not better than flow. If our VMTL was versed enough in SL and present along with both our TLs to do it... hrmm... right now I just don't see how it would work without them hiring more TMs to train to the task. Guess we'll see what happens. We are heading for the 2.0 reboot somewhere in the middle of this year so...

Some hours shift from Flow to Softlines, so it's just a matter of scheduling TMs in the morning with those hours.

 

[RightArm]

Some hours shift from Flow to Softlines, so it's just a matter of scheduling TMs in the morning with those hours.

Makes sense, but again we don't have TMs that are willing to work those hours outside of the ones that already do for the early morning zone. Our store started working backwards and instead of posting one TM in the early am to touch up zones there is one TM at night and two in the morning to make sure we're good for opening. So it'll be interesting to see how they manage it. I do know that our senior SLTL will find a way to make anything work.

 

[thechadness04]

I don't think it's fair to call them lazy. They don't set adjacencies nor remerchandise.

I agree.... to an extent... my SL flow team pushes in the same areas 4+ days a week, so why can't they seem to find something when we set the adjacency 3 weeks ago? Also, when I go and visually audit backstock I can literally see the handfuls of stuff they didn't want to deal with hung back there ... literally sections of random assortments of single items... I don't get it.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Get ready for Beckmann!

 

[soyaxo]

Not looking forward to it...

 

[RightArm]

Didn't go all that well in our store.... we ended up overstaffed for nothing. Anyone out there sell out already?

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Nope!

 

[Ahem]

We still have some of it. The pieces that were more wearable are pretty much all gone. The weirder stuff we still have some of. I... don't think the bright colors work for every skin tone tbh. I'm black with dark skin and tried on the orange skirt and it looks so good against my skin. I was just trying it for shits and giggles, but now I kinda want it.

 

[OlympicBanana]

SL rollout went into affect at the beginning of February at my store. The way we have it is split into 4 areas for 4 TMs; 1 in RTW and accessories, 1 in mens and activewear, 1 in shoes and sleepwear, and myself in B/G/I. Usually only one or two of us are in the building for breakouts (my store has had A LOT of issues with SL flow team over the years) and then we push basics, foldeds, and z-racks in our areas. Depending on the freight size and how much new product needs to be merchandised early on the floor, we're usually pushing anywhere from 2-4 hours, zoning as we push. Depending on the weeks POG and VA workload, we'll either work on resets in our own areas, or focus on research and normal SL duties. The system was rough at first, but we've mostly settled into a comfortable routine.

 

[Doglover89]

SL rollout went into affect at the beginning of February at my store. The way we have it is split into 4 areas for 4 TMs.

I like this idea a lot.
Questions: 1) What happens at night?
2) What do tms with limited availability do, such as one who works only nights or weekends?
3) What is your TLs role?

 

[Tessa120]

Yay, I found the Softlines thread!

I am new to retail so there are days when I wish I had just 10 minutes inside a guest's closet at home. 10 minutes. For 3 days in a row. Then they would feel my pain by the time I'm done.

I'm not new to phone customer service though, so playing social worker/mother confessor at times isn't too bad and I can control a call pretty well. But today I got one of those calls I absolutely hate, the ones where the person at the other end doesn't seem to need to breathe and wants to tell you their life story. Lady, I really didn't need to know that the panties you bought didn't fit past the tops of your thighs nor did I need to know that the perfume in the wipes you bought caused a rash in your, um, bikini area. And you didn't have to repeat the fit of the panties a second time. You just simply had to say that you had a return question for opened items, specifically a pack of underwear and a package of pre-moistened wipes. I didn't need the visuals.