Pet Valu closing all US Stores- liquidation sales start immediately

storewanderer
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Re: Pet Valu closing all US Stores- liquidation sales start immediately

Post by storewanderer »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: November 8th, 2020, 8:41 am One shipper who seemed to do a really good job with their boxes actually holding up during transit was Chewy. I had a few customers who ordered from them and those cartons were very sturdy and secured properly. But I've been retired for a couple years now and while the parcel avalanche had begun then, I can't even imagine given current circumstances what it's like now. It has to be overwhelming. At the end of my postal career (which spanned over 33 years), I liked to joke that I was actually a UPS guy who delivered mail on the side.
Chewy prides itself on its quality of packaging and so far I have found their packaging jobs to be just as good now as they've ever been. I think it is easy for a specialty pet retailer to get boxes that are the right thickness to hold these heavy items whereas you have a bigger shipper like Amazon who orders a lot of boxes or super thick plastic bags and ships 30 pounds of pet food in the same not so sturdy container that they just shipped some towels that weigh 25% that weight in. Could not believe the big super thick plastic bag my last 14 pound Amazon order showed up in, but only a couple items had badly damaged packaging and not so damaged that I put in for a replacement.

I too have seen USPS sending out some vans for packages and only packages (not letters). Sometimes even see those on Sunday.
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Re: Pet Valu closing all US Stores- liquidation sales start immediately

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

storewanderer wrote: November 8th, 2020, 1:24 pm I too have seen USPS sending out some vans for packages and only packages (not letters). Sometimes even see those on Sunday.
The Sunday deliveries are (at least in this area) just pretty much Amazon parcels. That literally started where I worked on the Sunday after I left. My last day of work was on a Friday and two days later that began and they've been going at it ever since. Also, this Wednesday is Veteran's Day which is a holiday but don't be surprised to see parcels being delivered that day as well. They have no choice-the volume is that overwhelming.
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Re: Pet Valu closing all US Stores- liquidation sales start immediately

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

BillyGr wrote: November 8th, 2020, 12:52 pm Of course, this area we have trucks that drive house to house anyway, so it's not the issue you mentioned in another post about being parked "down the block" trying to get a big package to someone (they will even back right into a driveway if the package is larger or multiples).
I was a city carrier on a walking route and it sounds like you live on either a rural route serviced by a rural carrier or a mounted route which is a rural route serviced by a city carrier. I had what was called a "park and loop" route which means you start at your truck and loop back around to your vehicle. And if the parcels were large enough and in great quantity, I would pull into people's driveways. I had one guy who owned several apartment houses in town and got all his supplies for those buildings through Amazon which were all delivered to his house. It was nothing to leave 10 or 20 large parcels there A DAY. It's great to wake up in the morning and realize that hey, I don't have to deal with that anymore :mrgreen:
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Re: Pet Valu closing all US Stores- liquidation sales start immediately

Post by BillyGr »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: November 8th, 2020, 5:54 pm
BillyGr wrote: November 8th, 2020, 12:52 pm Of course, this area we have trucks that drive house to house anyway, so it's not the issue you mentioned in another post about being parked "down the block" trying to get a big package to someone (they will even back right into a driveway if the package is larger or multiples).
I was a city carrier on a walking route and it sounds like you live on either a rural route serviced by a rural carrier or a mounted route which is a rural route serviced by a city carrier. I had what was called a "park and loop" route which means you start at your truck and loop back around to your vehicle. And if the parcels were large enough and in great quantity, I would pull into people's driveways. I had one guy who owned several apartment houses in town and got all his supplies for those buildings through Amazon which were all delivered to his house. It was nothing to leave 10 or 20 large parcels there A DAY. It's great to wake up in the morning and realize that hey, I don't have to deal with that anymore :mrgreen:
Yep, rural route - in fact, before they set up 911 and actually assigned street numbering, our address for mailing was RR5, Box 36. Even though we're part of a town (2 villages, 1 hamlet) just under 10,000 with 3 post offices (we won't mention how that division goes - like people that live very close to the hamlet post office but have addresses with one of the villages ...) and the largest town within the county (and pretty close population wise to the only small city).
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Re: Pet Valu closing all US Stores- liquidation sales start immediately

Post by mbz321 »

Alpha8472 wrote: November 5th, 2020, 2:40 pm Pet ownership is at an all time high. I would think that pet stores would have booming business at this time.
Pet'Valu' however, seems to have expanded way too quickly. They plopped a location in almost every new/remodeled shopping center in my area in the last few years. I put 'Valu' in quotes as they were ridiculously expensive and selection was pretty meh (mostly higher end pet products) due to the small size of their stores.
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Re: Pet Valu closing all US Stores- liquidation sales start immediately

Post by storewanderer »

mbz321 wrote: November 11th, 2020, 6:48 am
Alpha8472 wrote: November 5th, 2020, 2:40 pm Pet ownership is at an all time high. I would think that pet stores would have booming business at this time.
Pet'Valu' however, seems to have expanded way too quickly. They plopped a location in almost every new/remodeled shopping center in my area in the last few years. I put 'Valu' in quotes as they were ridiculously expensive and selection was pretty meh (mostly higher end pet products) due to the small size of their stores.
I wondered what the story on PetValu in the US was because it seems like they came out of nowhere and expanded very quickly.

The Pet Supermarket still seems to be operating sort of like normal. No explicit sign it will be closed. They have some animals again, most of the summer they had none (rabbits, etc.). The cages for local shelter cat adoptions have been empty now since early this year, maybe that is a COVID thing. Inventory level is still low but they are receiving some new merchandise. A scan error resulted in the cashier having to call someone on the phone at 7 PM to get their okay to change the price in the system (it was interesting when she said "I hung the tags up at the beginning of the month.. so I know it is the right item and the tag isn't expired)." Their "ad" is now a single page sheet of paper. They used to have a plastic bag that advertised their private label pet food (Performathin or something) and listed all of their store logos on it. Now they have a plastic bag that just says Pet Supermarket. Maybe they will just separate Pet Supermarket.
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Re: Pet Valu closing all US Stores- liquidation sales start immediately

Post by storewanderer »

Some changes at the Pet Supermarket Store:

1. They are ending some program tied to their loyalty card where you get a free bag of pet food after you buy a certain number of bags, at the end of this month. They are supposedly going to cut prices to account for this.
2. Signs posted state they will no longer accept checks after 1/1/21.
3. They do not appear to be selling calendars for 2021 this year (previously they did a $10 or something calendar where proceeds went to some organization and there were coupons in the calendar)

The store is very lightly stocked- it probably has half the inventory it had at this time last year (at best). Also replenishment seems to be particularly poor, with many items being out of stock now for the past 3 weeks. Replenishment of private label items (which are currently all in English/French packaging- same stuff they sell in the Canadian Pet Valu obviously) seems to be particularly bad.

They seem to have more promotions going this month, than they have had since about March. They seem to be back to their old promotional schedule (which was quite good- back when they had merchandise).

They did finally have a cat available for adoption from the local humane society. This is the first time I've seen any pet adoptions in the stores since March. That may have nothing to do with the store but something to do with the local humane society.
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