I think they decided to extend the promotion to get more mileage out of the posters they printed for all the stores in Australia. That and the fact that we didn't even receive any of the coloured promotional backpacks until a few days after the stated end of the sale. And even then, we only received selected colours. My new store (I've been moved again), Innaloo, only received white, dark green, and a handful of light blue and light and dark pink. So we missed out on receiving black, orange, yellow, more navy and whatever other colours they advertised. So of the huge backlog of backorders that we sceptically took, some customers will be pretty angry that we don't have all the colours. And then there's the ongoing grief we'll be faced with when the bargain shopper customers, at the POS, announce that they'd like X colour backpack. Great.
This isn't the first time that stock has been so delayed for a promotion that The Company has been forced/pressured to extend it. But of course, once it's past the stated end of the promotion, many customers don't bother coming back. There have been countless catalogues since the start of the year, where the stock has not arrived at all in time for the catalogue, and The Company printed out "apology" posters for us to put up in stores. No public apology was made, nothing printed in the newspapers or aired on television though. As if! That would be some unwanted bad publicity...
I have come to the conclusion that since The Company has decided to lower the prices on the majority of our stock, and then not provide us with decent amounts of stocks to sell (say, 60-odd styles of women's shoes and 4 pairs of each left) it's not the customers' fault that they're shopping for reduced stock. It's all reduced! Well, the majority of it anyway. But that doesn't make me any more eager to serve them! Our stores are set out so that it is easy for the customers to serve themselves, and of course, all our stock is on the floor so obviously, mid month of the beginning of spring, we're not going to have any more heavily reduced winter jackets "out the back". These kinds of promotions bring in the customers that will just buy a jacket/item because it's cheap, regardless of whether it's the right size. They buy the items in whatever bigger size that's left and wear them, a size or two too big. Looks ridiculous in my opinion, but hey, what would I know about fashion? I work at The Company.
We're also in the process of sending out more discontinued and current stock to the clearance stores, so our stores will be pretty much empty (or 30% capacity) until we receive some summer stock. No, still no short sleeved shirts or polos or sandals. We will of course, receive more of the stock we send out to clearance, back again, adding to more time wasted packing and unpacking stock.
So none of our retail stores have yet received any spring/summer stock, but we all know that the clearance stores are overloaded with the stuff. Checking out the online store on The Company website, I can get a fair indication of what we will soon be bombarded with. Going from 30% capacity, The Company will surely then take the opportunity to fill our near-empty stores with 40 boxes of stock in one delivery. That was just what happened at the beginning of the year, when we had no stock after Christmas/stocktake sales, as warehouse staff were on holidays or they didn't want to send us 'unnecesary' or 'non-priority' stock during a busy sales period. We had nothing to sell!
- Update -
Well, I bit the bullet and finally sent through the angry feedback about the unfairness of not getting paid to cash up. It was a long email, and I won't reprint it here, more info later. I sent it through on Thursday night, and apparently, staff at head office were so alarmed by the content of it, and that I referred to the low morale of staff in stores, that they immediately called my store, Innaloo on Friday, and spoke to Caroline for about half an hour! Caroline's great and has been with The Company for about 7 years or more, as a manager and now casual. She's trained a great deal of now Area Managers, managers and casual staff in her time, and I'm sure she gave them an appropriate earful! Oh, I hope it gets published and I hope they do follow it up with me, as I would certainly welcome the opportunity to discuss my grievances.
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