10 | Orgill Case Study Focus on Assortments After identifying and plugging holes in the existing inventory and product lines, the teams focused on immediate improvement and expanded their view to look at product availability at the assortment and category level. Once again, the team turned to the wealth of Orgill resources at their disposal for identifying what needed to be done to get Germantown Hardware back on track. “The store had some good building blocks, but there were still major opportunities that were being missed in almost every area,” Helms says. “There were incomplete assortments, lines they didn’t carry, unproductive products and also a need to switch vendors in some areas.” The first step to build a stronger offering at the assortment and category levels was for the team to identify gaps in current assortments, find suppliers where needed, convert vendors where needed and understand what product mix would best suit the needs of the customer base in Germantown. Thankfully, the team had a number of tools at their disposal. “We wanted to look at the core hardware categories we mentioned earlier, but we also wanted to look at just about every area of the store where we could make quick improvements,” Helms says. “We used a lot of our experience from Home Hardware (another CNRG brand) because there are some similarities in the overall makeup between the two brands. We knew what assortments and product mix worked for Home Hardware. Not only were we able to draw from these insights, but we also utilized information from other CNRG brands like Outdoor Supply Hardware, Town & Country Hardware and others.” Taking cues from other similar CNRG operations, the planning team also worked closely with Patrick Pinkston, who had served as Germantown Hardware's Orgill sales representative for years. In this role, Pinkston was keenly familiar with the operation and the market and was able to provide a high level of insight into the planning and design process. "A big part of the role of Orgill's sales team is to become a business consultant to the customers they serve," Walker says. "In this case, Patrick had a long history with this operation as well as the customers it served. His legacy Before - Entrance After - Entrance
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