Big Lots

[jamcool]

The usual food/HBA selections at the “close out” stores used to be….
Private label items-some from defunct stores
Different sized national brand products
National brand products that are made by their foreign facilities…mostly Latin America (Colgate toothpaste made in Colombia, for example)
Foreign made products (a lot from Latin America)

[ClownLoach]

I was in a Big Lots in Lake Elsinore yesterday. Seems like they are trying desperately to operate like a mix of a Michaels/Joann seasonal department, a small format Target for food/HBA/bed and bath, furniture store, and closeout store all in one. Seems like they're trying too many things and aren't really good at any of them. Walking the aisles it is clear that they have a regular "basic assortment" of year round regular SKUs like Tide detergent and Dove dish soap etc. and these are in SKU specific planogrammed sections for auto replenishment. Prices are not good at all on these year round regular items, prices are on shelf labels. But they will have let's say that 30' section of planogrammed laundry detergent and another 20' flex section of all the "bargains" which are just slopped onto the shelves with no bin labels and red shelf strips calling out the supposed 'big deal zone.'. These are the items that use a Big Lots price sticker and SKU on the item. The problem is that when you try to merchandise sloppy next to what is supposed to be a detail recovered year round planogram the customers will just trash the entire aisle and won't put anything back in its home. Then it becomes impossible for the store to maintain the inventory on these year round items which I'm assuming they hope you'll buy at a hefty markup along with your bargain basement markdowns.

What I saw was that the year round sections were in abysmal condition, some areas I would estimate were only 25% in stock or worse. And when you dig through the 'big deal zone' flex section to the side or across the aisle you find all the items that needed to go on a planogrammed location. Customers are confused by this too - because the items that have a planogrammed home don't have the price stickers on them. Nobody is buying these items because they have no idea what the price is, and because of the Big Lots model there is no such thing as a price checker.

It's too many concepts under one roof, too complicated for the customer to shop and understand the pricing (with half items ticketed and other half priced only on the shelf), must be a nightmare to manage the ordering and inventory accuracy, probably is high shrink everywhere, and there is next to zero staffing to try to keep the store in some sense of order, keep the checkout line short etc. The fact that half the items have to be scanned on the Big Lots tag and other half need their regular UPC scanned makes the checkout process slow as molasses on a cold day as the cashier has to look for two UPCs then decide which to scan. This also means they have zero ability to implement any kind of self checkout. Sometimes the same SKU is a year round item AND available as a discount hard ticketed item too (usually short dated etc. if it is hard ticketed) so there is no way that the customer could ever self check here.

They obviously can't afford the payroll to maintain decent operations, the operation clearly is harder to operate than a competing store either in the bargain basement realm like Dollar Tree or mainstream like a CVS or small format Target, and they're trying to be too many things. Jack of all trades, master of none. I miss when it was Pic N Save.

[norcalriteaidclerk]

I must note that the long established Carmichael location(walkable distance from home in fact)is the only local holdover location from the pic-n-save/macfrugals era(open since at least the early 1980's),a similar location on Harding in Roseville has since been replaced (within the past decade or two)by the Fairway location opposite 65 from the galleria.

Sent from my SM-G781U using Tapatalk

[Romr123]

I was in a Big Lots in Lake Elsinore yesterday. Seems like they are trying desperately to operate like a mix of a Michaels/Joann seasonal department, a small format Target for food/HBA/bed and bath, furniture store, and closeout store all in one. Seems like they're trying too many things and aren't really good at any of them. Walking the aisles it is clear that they have a regular "basic assortment" of year round regular SKUs like Tide detergent and Dove dish soap etc. and these are in SKU specific planogrammed sections for auto replenishment. Prices are not good at all on these year round regular items, prices are on shelf labels. But they will have let's say that 30' section of planogrammed laundry detergent and another 20' flex section of all the "bargains" which are just slopped onto the shelves with no bin labels and red shelf strips calling out the supposed 'big deal zone.'. These are the items that use a Big Lots price sticker and SKU on the item. The problem is that when you try to merchandise sloppy next to what is supposed to be a detail recovered year round planogram the customers will just trash the entire aisle and won't put anything back in its home. Then it becomes impossible for the store to maintain the inventory on these year round items which I'm assuming they hope you'll buy at a hefty markup along with your bargain basement markdowns.

What I saw was that the year round sections were in abysmal condition, some areas I would estimate were only 25% in stock or worse. And when you dig through the 'big deal zone' flex section to the side or across the aisle you find all the items that needed to go on a planogrammed location. Customers are confused by this too - because the items that have a planogrammed home don't have the price stickers on them. Nobody is buying these items because they have no idea what the price is, and because of the Big Lots model there is no such thing as a price checker.

It's too many concepts under one roof, too complicated for the customer to shop and understand the pricing (with half items ticketed and other half priced only on the shelf), must be a nightmare to manage the ordering and inventory accuracy, probably is high shrink everywhere, and there is next to zero staffing to try to keep the store in some sense of order, keep the checkout line short etc. The fact that half the items have to be scanned on the Big Lots tag and other half need their regular UPC scanned makes the checkout process slow as molasses on a cold day as the cashier has to look for two UPCs then decide which to scan. This also means they have zero ability to implement any kind of self checkout. Sometimes the same SKU is a year round item AND available as a discount hard ticketed item too (usually short dated etc. if it is hard ticketed) so there is no way that the customer could ever self check here.

They obviously can't afford the payroll to maintain decent operations, the operation clearly is harder to operate than a competing store either in the bargain basement realm like Dollar Tree or mainstream like a CVS or small format Target, and they're trying to be too many things. Jack of all trades, master of none. I miss when it was Pic N Save.

You synthesized the situation PERFECTLY. Overly complex, tough to operate, messy and unkempt. I don't think I ever buy any of the shelf-priced stuff except for the "everything bagel" seasoning (it's too expensive especially w/o coupons); the other stuff (the real closeout stuff) is all that I'm interested in.

[storewanderer]

I was in a Big Lots in Lake Elsinore yesterday. Seems like they are trying desperately to operate like a mix of a Michaels/Joann seasonal department, a small format Target for food/HBA/bed and bath, furniture store, and closeout store all in one. Seems like they're trying too many things and aren't really good at any of them. Walking the aisles it is clear that they have a regular "basic assortment" of year round regular SKUs like Tide detergent and Dove dish soap etc. and these are in SKU specific planogrammed sections for auto replenishment. Prices are not good at all on these year round regular items, prices are on shelf labels. But they will have let's say that 30' section of planogrammed laundry detergent and another 20' flex section of all the "bargains" which are just slopped onto the shelves with no bin labels and red shelf strips calling out the supposed 'big deal zone.'. These are the items that use a Big Lots price sticker and SKU on the item. The problem is that when you try to merchandise sloppy next to what is supposed to be a detail recovered year round planogram the customers will just trash the entire aisle and won't put anything back in its home. Then it becomes impossible for the store to maintain the inventory on these year round items which I'm assuming they hope you'll buy at a hefty markup along with your bargain basement markdowns.

What I saw was that the year round sections were in abysmal condition, some areas I would estimate were only 25% in stock or worse. And when you dig through the 'big deal zone' flex section to the side or across the aisle you find all the items that needed to go on a planogrammed location. Customers are confused by this too - because the items that have a planogrammed home don't have the price stickers on them. Nobody is buying these items because they have no idea what the price is, and because of the Big Lots model there is no such thing as a price checker.

It's too many concepts under one roof, too complicated for the customer to shop and understand the pricing (with half items ticketed and other half priced only on the shelf), must be a nightmare to manage the ordering and inventory accuracy, probably is high shrink everywhere, and there is next to zero staffing to try to keep the store in some sense of order, keep the checkout line short etc. The fact that half the items have to be scanned on the Big Lots tag and other half need their regular UPC scanned makes the checkout process slow as molasses on a cold day as the cashier has to look for two UPCs then decide which to scan. This also means they have zero ability to implement any kind of self checkout. Sometimes the same SKU is a year round item AND available as a discount hard ticketed item too (usually short dated etc. if it is hard ticketed) so there is no way that the customer could ever self check here.

They obviously can't afford the payroll to maintain decent operations, the operation clearly is harder to operate than a competing store either in the bargain basement realm like Dollar Tree or mainstream like a CVS or small format Target, and they're trying to be too many things. Jack of all trades, master of none. I miss when it was Pic N Save.

You synthesized the situation PERFECTLY. Overly complex, tough to operate, messy and unkempt. I don't think I ever buy any of the shelf-priced stuff except for the "everything bagel" seasoning (it's too expensive especially w/o coupons); the other stuff (the real closeout stuff) is all that I'm interested in.

I've bought some of their planogram shelf tag items from time to time when using the coupons for $5 off $15 or whatever. Some of the prices used to trend 5-10% higher than Wal Mart. Seems like it is 10% higher than Wal Mart at the least now... some items seem to be much much more.

Checkout process- so- if they scan an item's UPC that they are supposed to scan a Big Lots price sticker on, the register pops up an alert telling them to scan the Big Lots price sticker. The cashiers are trained to check each item for a Big Lots sticker and scan it if they see it, also make sure the sticker matches what is being scanned (since tag switching is a real issue with this model). So now let's go with the scenario, the cashier scans a regular UPC but register pops up an alert to scan Big Lots sticker. Problem is the sticker isn't on the item. There is a search function on the register for the cashier to search for the item by item description to charge the item based on the Big Lots price sticker.

Also I read United Furniture was a large supplier of furniture for Big Lots. They fully suspended operations recently and suddenly stopping work and laying off 2k+ employees, also calling shipments they were carrying that were in transit back to the warehouses (all shipments, not just Big Lots ones). Shipments third party carriers were pulling did continue to final destinations when the closure was announced.

We will see what happens. I don't want to make any rash conclusions or speculations. But seeing stores with sections at 25% in-stock on planogram based sections is worse condition than many pre-bankruptcy retailers I've watched over the years.

[bayford]

Is it normal for Big Lots to have their planograms visible for all to see? Because that's what my local store (which closed in 2020) always did during the decade it was open. Seriously, printouts of the store's planograms would either be in binders sitting on the shelves next to product or loose-leaf and taped to shelves. Either way, it made it convenient to see if the shelves were as well-stocked as they were supposed to be.

[cjd]

That sort of thing (planograms taped to shelves) seems common with dollar stores.

I rarely go to Bog Lots but the two biggest things I’ve noticed is prices are too high compared to Walmart even, and the store is well presented and organized.

I remember when Big Lots was messy and dumpy in the late 90s, the past 10-15 years they seem to have really cleaned up.

This particular location is older I’d guess for a Big Lots, having opened circa 1993.

[ClownLoach]

I was in a Big Lots in Lake Elsinore yesterday. Seems like they are trying desperately to operate like a mix of a Michaels/Joann seasonal department, a small format Target for food/HBA/bed and bath, furniture store, and closeout store all in one. Seems like they're trying too many things and aren't really good at any of them. Walking the aisles it is clear that they have a regular "basic assortment" of year round regular SKUs like Tide detergent and Dove dish soap etc. and these are in SKU specific planogrammed sections for auto replenishment. Prices are not good at all on these year round regular items, prices are on shelf labels. But they will have let's say that 30' section of planogrammed laundry detergent and another 20' flex section of all the "bargains" which are just slopped onto the shelves with no bin labels and red shelf strips calling out the supposed 'big deal zone.'. These are the items that use a Big Lots price sticker and SKU on the item. The problem is that when you try to merchandise sloppy next to what is supposed to be a detail recovered year round planogram the customers will just trash the entire aisle and won't put anything back in its home. Then it becomes impossible for the store to maintain the inventory on these year round items which I'm assuming they hope you'll buy at a hefty markup along with your bargain basement markdowns.

What I saw was that the year round sections were in abysmal condition, some areas I would estimate were only 25% in stock or worse. And when you dig through the 'big deal zone' flex section to the side or across the aisle you find all the items that needed to go on a planogrammed location. Customers are confused by this too - because the items that have a planogrammed home don't have the price stickers on them. Nobody is buying these items because they have no idea what the price is, and because of the Big Lots model there is no such thing as a price checker.

It's too many concepts under one roof, too complicated for the customer to shop and understand the pricing (with half items ticketed and other half priced only on the shelf), must be a nightmare to manage the ordering and inventory accuracy, probably is high shrink everywhere, and there is next to zero staffing to try to keep the store in some sense of order, keep the checkout line short etc. The fact that half the items have to be scanned on the Big Lots tag and other half need their regular UPC scanned makes the checkout process slow as molasses on a cold day as the cashier has to look for two UPCs then decide which to scan. This also means they have zero ability to implement any kind of self checkout. Sometimes the same SKU is a year round item AND available as a discount hard ticketed item too (usually short dated etc. if it is hard ticketed) so there is no way that the customer could ever self check here.

They obviously can't afford the payroll to maintain decent operations, the operation clearly is harder to operate than a competing store either in the bargain basement realm like Dollar Tree or mainstream like a CVS or small format Target, and they're trying to be too many things. Jack of all trades, master of none. I miss when it was Pic N Save.

You synthesized the situation PERFECTLY. Overly complex, tough to operate, messy and unkempt. I don't think I ever buy any of the shelf-priced stuff except for the "everything bagel" seasoning (it's too expensive especially w/o coupons); the other stuff (the real closeout stuff) is all that I'm interested in.

I've bought some of their planogram shelf tag items from time to time when using the coupons for $5 off $15 or whatever. Some of the prices used to trend 5-10% higher than Wal Mart. Seems like it is 10% higher than Wal Mart at the least now... some items seem to be much much more.

Checkout process- so- if they scan an item's UPC that they are supposed to scan a Big Lots price sticker on, the register pops up an alert telling them to scan the Big Lots price sticker. The cashiers are trained to check each item for a Big Lots sticker and scan it if they see it, also make sure the sticker matches what is being scanned (since tag switching is a real issue with this model). So now let's go with the scenario, the cashier scans a regular UPC but register pops up an alert to scan Big Lots sticker. Problem is the sticker isn't on the item. There is a search function on the register for the cashier to search for the item by item description to charge the item based on the Big Lots price sticker.

Also I read United Furniture was a large supplier of furniture for Big Lots. They fully suspended operations recently and suddenly stopping work and laying off 2k+ employees, also calling shipments they were carrying that were in transit back to the warehouses (all shipments, not just Big Lots ones). Shipments third party carriers were pulling did continue to final destinations when the closure was announced.

We will see what happens. I don't want to make any rash conclusions or speculations. But seeing stores with sections at 25% in-stock on planogram based sections is worse condition than many pre-bankruptcy retailers I've watched over the years.

The challenge I saw was that they do have items that are same exact SKU in both store hard ticket item as well as planogrammed. I guess they use the hard ticket to mark down when it's getting close to expiration date? But they absolutely have a problem with scanning the UPC and missing their own sticker so the UPC rings at a higher price.

I didn't spend much time in furniture. Looked low end and overpriced. But I saw Ashley branding on several items so they must be the new supplier. Maybe they make a low end line for Big Lots? They also had Sealy mattresses but they were obviously a lower end model than anything sold at other mattress stores under their name.

The 25% in stock I am guessing is entirely store execution. They're not getting their counts and orders done because they are too stuck dealing with a stockroom full of crap grade Christmas items that all were produced from pictures of the Michaels and Hobby Lobby 2019 displays. They should not have a single box of Christmas left in the stock room at this point in December, but I peeked in the doors and the pallet racks were throwing up boxes of holiday labeled goods.

I literally think that they take pictures at those stores of what they like to buy a few years down the road.
They copy the Michaels decor planogram (it's practically identical in the Christmas decor aisles) then they must go around China or wherever else and try to find someone who will make a knockoff. The Big Lots price is of course double the original price of Michaels or Hobby Lobby, quality is half or less, and the sale price is still more than the full price those stores charged for about the first week before they began the perpetual discounts from 40% on up.

I should also mention why I went there. I bought a popcorn maker cart which was about $35 after coupons and discount promo codes online. The Big Lots full price was $99. It's a fun little thing but horribly manufactured. Three screw sockets cracked easily upon assembly and a plastic tab sheared right off the bottom. It didn't appear that any of these screws or tabs were essential to structural stability once it was finally fully assembled so I didn't have to return it. It works... Fine? It is a cute little thing next to the bar. Would I pay $99 for it? Never. Not in a million years.

And what's better than that? Exact same junky cart is "on sale" for only $189.99 at Kohl's - but you get free shipping and $30 in Kohl's Cash! Good old Kohl's is making Big Lots look like a first class retailer with world class discounts.

[storewanderer]

At least Big Lots takes the junk item and sells it at a reasonable mark-up...

Kohl's... yeah. I don't know about Kohl's. Cannot believe the prices they post on things. Given they have barricaded the men's side doors here at 3 different stores with security gates (hope the fire inspector doesn't visit) and have permanent signs on the checkstands down there to use other checkouts at women's side, I think it is obvious that Kohl's is not expecting to have much in the way of holiday crowds.

[Alpha8472]

The Big Lots in Dublin, California has been having a store closing sale. It is a former Marina Safeway in very good condition. It still looks like a classic Safeway from outside.

This store has been neglected for years. The sign out front has burned out letters. It lights up at night spelling Bigots.

It shares a parking lot with Dollar Tree. Perhaps Dollar Tree was too much competition for it.

I hope the next tenant keeps the classic Safeway Marina architecture.