Father's Day used to be one of the biggest times of the year for The Company, a predominantly male clothing and footwear outlet. Used to be. Several things have changed that, more on that later. So, The Company was favoured by lots of dads for their great quality clothing and Australian made footwear. You got what you paid for.
We have a promo running in our retail stores: spend $50 or more and get a backpack (normal RRP $100) in a colour of your choice (10 or so colours available) for $5.
Hmm... how can I go about this without outing myself completely? I can't. I think that pretty much gave it away.
Anyway, we received and were instructed to put up the posters drawing attention to this great offer about a week or so ago, maybe 1 1/2 weeks ago, I don't work that often anymore, so don't take much notice.
Background info-
The retail stores have had similar offers in the past, what, last year now? I've lost track of time, people and promos at The Company... Spend $100 or more, get the backpack for $5. It would be advertised and invariably bring in lots of customers. The Company, in its infinite wisdom, decided to keep the offer ongoing, so we often had stock of backpacks to offer with high sales. Most stores had plenty of them, as the staff often didn't bother offering them to customers who spent over the requisite amount.
Retail stores only ever stocked the backpacks in navy and they were not a 'stock' item, ie they weren't in regular supply. At my former regular store, we had sold out of most giveaways and promo items, so had them sent over from bigger stores with more stock and less inclination for turnover...
As our customers get stingier, so do our staff. So many people just don't feel that the customers 'deserve' the giveaways and special offers. I am also of that opinion, sometimes... though I do try to reward the good ones!
Here are some reasons why we have stopped offering giveaways (apart from it cheapening our reputation)
- There are now the types of customers that ask for free gifts with any purchase (say $20 tshirts) 'as they got one last time'. These parsimonious types get a stare from me and no freebie. Or a curt reply, "No, that's only if you spend $200 or more" insert smirk depending on mood...
- Then there are the ones that are delighted when you offer them a freebie. Of these types, some will then ask for something APART from the selection I have offered. 'Can you throw in some socks instead?' or 'How about a free belt? Come on, they're the same price' Others will take so long deciding and tossing up between colours, etc that the store fills up with customers which try to catch my eye or get my attention. Don't make me regret my offer nitwit. I have other customers to serve and tasks to complete.
- People coming back with 'faulty' giveaways and demanding replacements/repairs, etc and just being generally difficult.
- People coming back to exchange freebies.
- After a big shopping spree, customers feeling sudden buyers' remorse and returning items without freebie. So it all seems like a scam, though they may indeed have been genuine in wanting the items purchased for themselves/husband, etc. That and the fact that they have wasted our time serving them.
*because they've lowered the minimum spending amount to qualify for a freebie, we have a lot more customers who could previously never afford to get a "quality The Company" backpack/etc and are more stingier than the ones of FD two years ago. The minimum spend amount then was $150. Now it is $50. See why?
Anyway, back to the promos... Earlier this year, our clearance stores had some good promos going on with said coloured backpacks. I don't know what the spending minimum was, but it was pretty good for them to be selling lots of backpacks as well. I even saw some on eBay... dodgy...
So, bottom line: The Company giveaway backpacks were navy for retail stores, coloured for clearance stores. Neither of the two types of stores were kept in regular supply of said backpacks after the promo.
Enter 2006 Father's Day promo-
What a scam.
We have as far as I know, still not received any backpacks. I was working at Innaloo yesterday, nothing received. Nevertire nearby also had not received any. Unless there was a huge delivery today to fill all the backorders and projected rush in the lead up to FD on Sunday, I can see a lot of angry customers. We do NOT receive stock on weekends. We had already all sold out of our meagre existing supply of navy ones and staff had to explain that again, we have not yet received any coloured ones yet, and began to take backorders.
We were reassured on Monday that backpack supplies were imminent and were indeed coming. Many more prepared customers have already bought their FD gifts and the ones that only wanted to spend $50 to get the backpack were understandably pissed. Other people, on hearing that we have not got any stock, will not care. Others still will ask for an alternative, say a free shirt. What the!? Get out of my store!
This is just like the previous sale we had, which was so popular also because it offered a particularly fine looking, expensive 'giveaway' promo. Minimum spend only $100, not hard with everything on sale, but hard because no stocks of said sale items.
What is similar about both sales is that we had a selected promo item to be sold when a customer spends over a requisite amount. Problem is, both promos were advertised and in both instances, we were never supplied with adequate, or more stocks apart from what we already had on hand from a previous promo. Which was not much. What happened with the last promo was that the clearance stores, which for some unknown reason also had the promo items, had to send them to us late in the sale period, as The Company couldn't get their act together and send us enough stock in time. All this transfer of stock between stores can't be cheap. They kick up a stink when we don't send discontinued stock in one consignment. Now they're getting clearance stores to waste time and freight sending us their stock because The Company is in damage control. There is too much sending of stock back and forth.
So the only customers who actually got the special offer promo items last catalogue were the ones that came in early (say, the first 2 days) and the ones that were lucky enough to come in at the end of the sale. The majority of customers who came in early-midway through the sale missed out. I have stopped taking orders and backorders for stock, promo stock is (usually) not to be backordered under any circumstances, as there is little-no chance of getting more stock in.
I am fortunate enough to have today (Friday, 9AM-9PM trade) and tomorrow off. I will get to work on Sunday, Father's Day though. It will certainly be interesting to see if the clearance stores have sent us whatever backpacks they had leftover, and if we will indeed receive any at all, as some staff have been taking backorders for them. I'm more cynical than that.
Though I can understand their frustration at the false advertising, I can't do anything to appease their anger except offer them a feedback form and phone number and email address in order to make sure they are heard. Hey, I know how you feel. I know exactly what the situation is, I have written through several staff feedbacks, but they don't listen to us. I tell my customers that, and encourage them to go write some feedback, because The Company certainly doesn't care about us. Heck, I've even been known to go onto The Company's website and write through customer feedback myself!* It's all published for the world to see, positive and negative, so for a short time, I was infamous!
*Using pseudonyms of course, and for the record, it was similar to my internal staff feedback and received the same circular, stupid, repetitive reply which completely ignored the issues raised.
So, happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, and if you happen to be shopping in one of our stores this FD, be sure to be understanding of the poor staff who have no control over the availability of those really cool, fashionable backpacks.
No comments:
Post a Comment