Archived Tips and insight for new Softlines TL?

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*sigh* They keep promising us to move the phone to the fitting room...but I seriously doubt that will ever happen.
 
@jackofallworkcenters At my store, if there's a ton of softlines re-shop, we work on it for smart huddle and/or mid-day zone. Suggest this to the ETLs if you haven't already done so. If softlines is the area of greatest need, then that's where everyone should be.
 
Soft-lines is my first born child.
  • Jewelry- my absolute favorite part of the store - get to know your vendor, make sure your team is pushing jewelry 1-2 times a week, zoning and working the back stock to see if it can go out. Those pink boxes are a b****.
  • Accessories - flex, have it make sense. The adjacency not always/rarely works. Keep end caps and enhancements the same but flex in aisles. Keep brands in their own aisles. And those tags that are square and say special edition are meant to be put on the end caps and enhancements! I talked my TL into letting me zone it a month ago and ever since it has looked AWESOME and is easy to keep up with.
  • Shoes- to actually zone in its entirety would take too long for one night. Have Mondays being focus on super zoning women's, Tuesday girls, Wednesday, babies, etc etc. and have them just "zone" the other areas. Make sure signs and displays are up. The best way is to use double sided sticky tape.
  • Men &rtw- swap out quads for convertibles or high capacity. It is way more efficient for guests to shop jeans, bathing suits, shorts, and jackets this way. It looks and stays in better presentation.
  • Back wall & basics - last month our pog team replaced all the individual label holders in men's basics, hosiery, some infant hardlines, and shoes back wall with these awesome 48" label holder made for pegs! The labels stay up way better, the pegs can't slide around as much and drum roll.... All you need is the acrylic 7x11 sign holder for ad time! Brilliant, I know.
  • Intimates- panty bins- stay on top of them. Every day. Midday. 15 minutes. Have one day of the week be dedicated to zoning intimates. If you don't keep up you'll wind up dead.
  • Sleepwear. Set the adjacency and never look back. It's simple.
  • Make sure all table and racks have locations on each side and POG headers.
  • Make sure to check the assortment detail report on store applications.. It will tell uo all assortment packs that are back stocked. Scan them, if it comes up active nop, or ad start it is USUALlY hanging product that should not be back stocked. This will help you keep your floor looking full.
 
ciNOThyfs said:
Soft-lines is my first born child.
  • Shoes- to actually zone in its entirety would take too long for one night. Have Mondays being focus on super zoning women's, Tuesday girls, Wednesday, babies, etc etc. and have them just "zone" the other areas. Make sure signs and displays are up. The best way is to use double sided sticky tape.
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When we had the hours and manpower to do this in shoes, it was awesome. If you think you can implement this, do it.
 
Softlines Ninja said:
ciNOThyfs said:
Soft-lines is my first born child.
  • Shoes- to actually zone in its entirety would take too long for one night. Have Mondays being focus on super zoning women's, Tuesday girls, Wednesday, babies, etc etc. and have them just "zone" the other areas. Make sure signs and displays are up. The best way is to use double sided sticky tape.
Click to expand...
When we had the hours and manpower to do this in shoes, it was awesome. If you think you can implement this, do it.
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What I would do is focus on one valley per night, that way it wasn't too time consuming and you could just "pick up" the rest of shoes... I wish that our shoes were like dsw or Marshall's... I'm about to get some adhesive dividers up in there.
 
Depends on time of day and what needs to be done for me.

In the morning, if I'm opening and there's no TL, assuming all tables were folded the night before, I do any table reshop from the day before and start with the areas that don't last long, so rtw tables, then girls, then I pick an area to stick with.

If a TL is there, they usually give me an area. In that case (also, applies to a mid shift), I'd take the reshop to the area and assess what needs to be done and what reshop I have. I'm usually in boys/girls or baby. In baby, I'd do gondola reshop first, zoning as I go. I separate gondola reshop from clothes and go aisle by aisle cleaning up and putting stuff back. Some of my coworkers just grab things and go. I always sort my stuff first because I personally find it easier to focus on one chunk at a time. I do the same with the clothes.

At night, depends on how long the shift is. If it's a longer one, I'll start off same way I would in that last paragraph, but I'd cut it short and eventually focus on tables and zoning all of softlines. Usually we only have one or two closers, so it's never perfect, but before my store started this whole no folding thing I mentioned, we always got all tables folded and at least the outer racks zoned pretty well, unless there was a cashier shortage. Then last hour, I walk the whole area again making sure nothing's on the floor, do touch ups and collect the other world stuff. I haven't closed alone in a while though.

My closing nights are my ETLs as well and she always helps fold and she folds so fast, I barely do anything lol. Usually just do most of rtw, shoes and activewear if it's just the two of us.
 
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Just recently moved out of softlines, but here were our routines! I was just a brand TM, but we had a brand new TL who I basically trained
Weekly:
Plan and map your workload. Figure out when & who will do your VA's and POGs. Don't forget the salesplanners, they are under a different section in the adjacency calendar than the rest of your softlines POGS! (assuming they're not delegated to the POG team)
Every Friday/Saturday I used to make an ad map for the ad setup person, copied all current VA maps and highlighted the racks that had items pictured in the ad.
Every Wednesday morning I superzoned, flexed d-code, and researched jewelry and watches.
Right before I moved we were making a weekly routine of doing a backroom audit. Printed out the backroom location detail report for softlines aisles, and pulled all DCODE. This report is also helpful if you have tables or aisles in shoes that get empty looking, you can pull new product to set early. This was awesome!! Helped keep the floor full and reduce A-Markdowns.

Morning routines:
Check workbench for urgent messages or other softlines messages. If there's anything that they say needs to be done, do it.
The first thing the opener was supposed to do was grab jewelry from receiving, and work it out. They also locked up any vendor jewelry from the truck. This is SUPER helpful and makes the weekly jewelry task go much faster.
Then, work on tasks. POGS first, then VAs. We kept a list of what was scheduled to be done that week at the fitting room. Once the tasks were done, we would assess reshop and work on that if needed, or do label maintenance.
If the opening TM is not trained to do POGS or VAs, we had them do little tasks: work clearance, superzone an area, label maintenance, or leave some product to flex out for them with a note on where to put it. If there was no new stuff but we had empty endcaps or fixtures, we just pulled clothes from that area and set up a little outfit or whatever on it.
If there is a phone up at guest service, and the operator is needed to help with reshop or zone away from the phones, forward that sucker up to guest services!

Night routines:
We used to have a person that came in at night and just did reshop while 2-3 people wave zoned. This was helpful, but myTime doesn't give us enough hours anymore. 🙁
We get really short staffed at night now, so when I am there I run through all areas except men's, active, and intimates (the operator zones these areas) first thing and pick up off the floor. (especially shoes) Then, I start in RTW with the actual zone and I send the other zoner (if there is one) to do girls, boys, infants. We meet in shoes at the end (goal time to get to shoes is 9)

Operator:
The first thing they ALL have to do is repackaging/getting numbers for things that need them to be defected. If they have no equipment, they were to use the service desk register.
Our operator station is near swim and juniors, so we had the morining operator own that area. They zoned up to the fire escape and put out all swimsuits.
The night operator zones mens, active, and intimates.

Sorry for the long post, hope you find it helpful!
 
My store used to be like that. Well, we had a phone in the fitting room, but the operator in tsc had to transfer to us or we had to dial to pick up on 80 (or wherever they put the calls). Now we share the phone duties with tsc, because their hours dropped.
 
Intimates Specialist said:
Our phone operator is TSC. We don't have a phone in the fitting room. Any other stores like this?
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sher said:
My store used to be like that. Well, we had a phone in the fitting room, but the operator in tsc had to transfer to us or we had to dial to pick up on 80 (or wherever they put the calls). Now we share the phone duties with tsc, because their hours dropped.
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We only ever have an operator in the TSC on Black Friday. The rest of the year, it's whoever's at the fitting room.
 
Our FRO has never ending reshop to fold, hang & repackage in addition to answering the phones, calling out breaks and lunches, reminding the LOD to check FF every half hour & zoning. When we get paid they also hand out checks. It gets pretty hectic back there & it's hotter than heck too. I can't imagine not having an operator.
 
Retail Girl said:
Intimates Specialist said:
Our phone operator is TSC. We don't have a phone in the fitting room. Any other stores like this?
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So you just have someone hanging out in the TSC all day just waiting for the phone to ring? Seriously, I am in the wrong store with the wrong job!
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At our store that was the the HR TM from 8-3.
He worked one evening shift so either they had someone at the desk or it was at the dressing room.
 
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