
Observations in the Walking – Department – Part 1
I have been in the pet industry for almost 40 years and have run smaller petshops and a large pet store of around 1.000 square meters by myself for over 20 years.
That is why I know that the walking department, i.e. the department with leashes, collars, harnesses etc. has never been easy to manage successfully.
But last year a consultancy project made me rethink again.
To do this I first spent many hours observing these shelves in different specialized stores in Germany of all sizes.
Very often this category is located in busy „ passageways “ with little space to look around undisturbed, to choose, to compare or try the products. The customer will be often interrupted and feels uncomfortable and somehow out of place.
There is no customer service for trying on things, as there is no designated space, i.e. a kind of „ changing room for dogs “, an area where you can be advised and try things on undisturbed.
You are forced to leave the dog on the floor and bend down awkwardly or you have the dog in a shopping trolley.
When you observe how cumbersome this process is, especially for older people or people with disabilities, you can guess that you only will do this when there are no other options.
At least it will prevent many purchases and additional sales.
You will not remember a positive experience and you won`t enthusiastically recommend it to other persons.
In the rarest of these cases, I have experienced that someone from the staff was taking care of these ( possible ) customers. However, customers often looked around somehow helpless and did not see anyone from the staff.
In some cases I was asked to support…
In very few stores the individual shelf elements correspond to a predefined standard and are often untidy and chaotic.
The shelving system and the construction have a DIY store character. There is no system according to which the customer can easily orientate himself, for example everything for smaller dogs or everything for holidays, i.e. a functional sorting or a colour – or uniform – sorting.
If other brands are sold alongside the own brands, for example Hunter, Trixie, Wolters etc., these elements are connected next to the own – brand modules and not integrated. The result is a bigger loss of clarity, the more the wider the total shelf space will be.
In very large stores this will be 10 meters and more, in front of which the customer will stand and there has to find the right collar ( size, colour, function, quality, price etc. ), compare it, take it out of the various shelves and hang it back again and, if necessary, try it on somewhere.
The floor edge of the shelving systems also interferes – especially for people who are not particularly tall – as it gives a distance of approximately at least 50 cm.
This makes it particularly difficult to reach the items placed above 1,50 meters hight.
Removing these items is already difficult, especially when several different and differently sized items are hanging on one hook, but hanging them back is even more difficult.
In general it can be said that there are usually too many items hanging on one hook.
Considerung the turnover rates per item it rarely makes sense to stock these items twice. This will also contribute a lot to an untidy and disorganized shelf.
In most of the visited stores there was a disorder: goods were out of stock, hanging on the wrong hooks, lying on the floor, the hooks were empty or too full…
This is not only bad for the customer because it is uninviting and not conductive to sales, it is also not supporting the work of the staff.
Counselling is made difficult, a correct order will be very difficult to manage. In cases of doubt something will be ordered which is still somewhere in stocks or you will forget something.
This will cost more time for eyeryone.
And you will only take this time if there is no other way and if it will be unavoidable.
If you will stock external brands, the shelves are usually maintained and equipped by the suppliers themselves.
However, these shelves look almost identical in the stores of the competition, so that the customer does not know at that moment where he is buying at all – or in retrospect – does not know exactly because the Hunter-, Trixie-, Wolters – etc. – shelves look identical.
To arrange and install a concept with a clear store branding also for this category should be much better.
From all these described observations and others I have developed new ideas and solutions to upgrade this important category.
These options will be described and explained in the following newsletters step by step.
The Walking – Department is a very important part of a specialized pet store.
It could help a lot to increase customer satisfaction, achieve many extra sales
and significantly increase professional competences.
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