Orgill Case Study | 9 Attacking the Inventory “The first thing we knew we would need to address when we had control of the store was the inventory level,” Sieggreen says. “There were a lot of out-of-stocks, incomplete assortments, overstock and all kinds of issues. Because there were so many holes, it was nearly impossible for anyone to come in and buy what they needed for a complete project. So, inventory was first on our list.” The store’s previous management had focused on replenishing stock primarily in the fastest-moving items, but this philosophy would leave the store over-inventoried in some areas and result in glaring holes in others. “There were a lot of holes at this store,” White says. “Because we see a lot of assortments and a lot of traffic at our other stores, we can kind of just stand there and look at what’s on the shelves and see what’s missing. So our first step was to walk the whole store and fill in those holes with what was missing. Pretty simply, our first order of business was to get products on the shelves.” Prior to the acquisition, Germantown Hardware had a strong reputation for lawn and garden, grilling, outdoor power equipment and paint, but as a result of their focus on these categories, they had allowed their presence in other core categories slip, according to Helms. “First thing, after generally doing a cleaning and organization of the store, was to look at these core categories where they had sort of lost focus,” he says. “In a lot of ways, these categories, like builders hardware, plumbing and electrical, were low-hanging fruit for improvement.” So when it came to the immediate improvement plan, reordering and eliminating the out-of-stocks in core categories was quickly accomplished by the Orgill teams working in tandem to identify gaps and get orders placed. Next up was identifying the actual assortment gaps that existed across many categories at Germantown Hardware. Before - Germantown Hardware Exterior After - Germantown Hardware Exterior
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