Halloween Merchandise

[storewanderer]

I noticed tonight that Halloween Merchandise was already 90% off at some stores. I have never seen so many stores get to 90% off so fast.

Specifically Target, one Wal Mart (the other two were 75% off), and a few Walgreens (the other three I went into were 80% off or had none left).

I couldn't help but notice how terrible this merchandise was that was left at these places. Most of it was skeleton themed and just looked horrible to me. I am thinking these stores, particularly Wal Mart, made the decision to rapidly discount this stuff to get it out of the stores as soon as possible.

What was interesting is the varying degrees to which the Wal Marts had the "small seasonal area" (where Halloween was- typically near the pharmacy doors) Christmas set; some were almost fully set, some hadn't even started. All of these Wal Marts have had the main Christmas set around Garden since October 1 (they had a deadline to get it set out there by).

Also Walgreens had zero Christmas out or were in the process of putting it out tonight.

[ClownLoach]

I think everyone went too crazy on skeleton decor. I don't have any of that because it's ugly, it's cheap looking, and it doesn't really stand out in the dark either. Everyone wanted to sell a giant skeleton like Home Depot too.

The smart stores blow it out fast. The ones I have trouble comprehending are Michael's and Kohl's who will sit on this deteriorating product for months. Kohl's still has 4th of July decor lying in the clearance section. At 90% off its still worthless because it is shop worn. Michaels will hold holidays about 45 additional days before donating the merchandise or boxing it up and selling as a "grab bag." Usually the post holiday clearance is a worse deal because it is 60% off for another month but the coupons don't apply for clearance. Prior to the holiday they'll go 60% for a week or two and also have an additional 20% off coupon.

And Target is super sloppy these days which can be very beneficial. They are reckless these days about ad signs. The weekend before Halloween all the remaining decor was priced at 70% off clearance, but they signed everything... Including the huge back wall of candy. And I am not talking about a couple of signs, there were at least two dozen signs that just say clearance 70% off for the candy wall. Filled up the cart (we are in a huge trick-or-treat neighborhood and get at least 500 kids, I'm dead serious, it's exhausting). Snapped a few pictures and went up front where it all rang up full price and told them you signed it, you sell it. They acknowledged that they had too much and the improper signing is intentional but it requires a manual markdown. I guess they've never heard of weights and measures compliance. I'm sure a lot of people grabbed a bag or two and went through self checkout and didn't notice, since due to poor execution most of the shelves didn't have any shelf tags and the packages were not pre-ticketed.

It would be nice if everyone just priced this stuff at a fair price in the first place, which is why Lowes, Home Depot, and of course Walmart keep taking a larger share of the seasonal business at the expense of these high-low price model places.

I wonder how much is left at Big Lots?

[storewanderer]

The Big Lots in Sparks still had a fair amount left about a week ago, but almost no candy.

I forgot to look at the closing stores.

Wal Mart has removed all Halloween from the floor around Reno today/yesterday. I am not sure if it was a local or corporate directive but the stuff is gone. They were 75% off when they removed it all.

I had that issue in Target on Monday night. They had an aisle of Halloween Food mixed with other items and the clearance signs all said 90% off. There wasn't a 70% off sign in sight as they were aggressively setting Christmas. The food only scanned at 70% off, not 90% off. I was given price adjustments without issue on self checkout, the employee said it had been happening all day. Then I went to the other Target which had 3 aisles pretty full of various product left; their signs all just said 70% off, but the non food scanned 90% off and food 70% off. One item I bought scanned on the price scanner as "buy 1 get 1 50% off with Circle" which was interesting as I have never seen that stack with clearance before. So I bought quite a few. The price didn't come up that way after I entered Circle and I told the employee. The employee said that clearance doesn't apply to those discounts. Then I said well I used the price scanner and it showed this item at clearance then it said buy one get one 50% off with Circle. The employee said no it doesn't work that way let me show you then took a Zebra, scanned the item, and then the image of the item and price/promotion on the Zebra was identical to what I had seen on the price scanner. The employee at this point got an angry look on her face and seemed frustrated, but said "that is a mistake but fine I'll adjust the price" - real attitude.

[ClownLoach]

The Big Lots in Sparks still had a fair amount left about a week ago, but almost no candy.

I forgot to look at the closing stores.

Wal Mart has removed all Halloween from the floor around Reno today/yesterday. I am not sure if it was a local or corporate directive but the stuff is gone. They were 75% off when they removed it all.

I had that issue in Target on Monday night. They had an aisle of Halloween Food mixed with other items and the clearance signs all said 90% off. There wasn't a 70% off sign in sight as they were aggressively setting Christmas. The food only scanned at 70% off, not 90% off. I was given price adjustments without issue on self checkout, the employee said it had been happening all day. Then I went to the other Target which had 3 aisles pretty full of various product left; their signs all just said 70% off, but the non food scanned 90% off and food 70% off. One item I bought scanned on the price scanner as "buy 1 get 1 50% off with Circle" which was interesting as I have never seen that stack with clearance before. So I bought quite a few. The price didn't come up that way after I entered Circle and I told the employee. The employee said that clearance doesn't apply to those discounts. Then I said well I used the price scanner and it showed this item at clearance then it said buy one get one 50% off with Circle. The employee said no it doesn't work that way let me show you then took a Zebra, scanned the item, and then the image of the item and price/promotion on the Zebra was identical to what I had seen on the price scanner. The employee at this point got an angry look on her face and seemed frustrated, but said "that is a mistake but fine I'll adjust the price" - real attitude.

Yeah, why would you want to sell the product by honoring the price with a markdown when you can throw it in the trash dumpster and get nothing for it? I think all of these stores have given up on any kind of business acumen discussion for their employees and they just give them a bunch of rules to follow without understanding why they matter. So the employees, and even some lower level supervisors and managers, have no clue what makes the business run or turn profit. As a result they'll gladly hold up the line and customer for ten minutes trying to prevent a five dollar markdown, failing to calculate the cost of the cashier labor and their own labor. By the time they're done defending the store as if it was their own wallet they spent double what they saved, and if they instead realized they have to give the markdown now they doubled or tripled the loss. Some of these companies create the wasted labor situation because they run a score card report that weighs million dollar categories like sales equally with thousand dollar categories like markdowns. So the manager who is missing millions in sales to budget but has low markdowns and maybe some other oblivious stat like high Circle card applications is going to be rated a "better" manager "overall" even though the P&L looks like crap. There should be no more important report in retail than the P&L at the end of the day, because every other measured item contributes if it matters. And if it doesn't matter then it should not be reported on. That's why companies like BB&B who famously didn't let the Manager see the actual profit and loss of their stores went out of business.

[storewanderer]

Yeah, why would you want to sell the product by honoring the price with a markdown when you can throw it in the trash dumpster and get nothing for it? I think all of these stores have given up on any kind of business acumen discussion for their employees and they just give them a bunch of rules to follow without understanding why they matter. So the employees, and even some lower level supervisors and managers, have no clue what makes the business run or turn profit. As a result they'll gladly hold up the line and customer for ten minutes trying to prevent a five dollar markdown, failing to calculate the cost of the cashier labor and their own labor. By the time they're done defending the store as if it was their own wallet they spent double what they saved, and if they instead realized they have to give the markdown now they doubled or tripled the loss. Some of these companies create the wasted labor situation because they run a score card report that weighs million dollar categories like sales equally with thousand dollar categories like markdowns. So the manager who is missing millions in sales to budget but has low markdowns and maybe some other oblivious stat like high Circle card applications is going to be rated a "better" manager "overall" even though the P&L looks like crap. There should be no more important report in retail than the P&L at the end of the day, because every other measured item contributes if it matters. And if it doesn't matter then it should not be reported on. That's why companies like BB&B who famously didn't let the Manager see the actual profit and loss of their stores went out of business.

I'm thinking the employee just doesn't even want to go to the effort to do the markdown. As bad as it sounds I think some of these employees are so disengaged (tried to use a polite word) that they would prefer some other employee has to put the stuff in the dumpster if it saves them the trouble of having to even do a markdown.

It is really a negative experience lately dealing with price errors or cashier errors at stores. Nobody is apologetic. Everyone is annoyed. I don't know what this attitude is. It is like the employees are upset I have the nerve to ask for the posted price.

I think there is a cultural issue that we are not supposed to "question the price" of things. It is considered rude. Many of these cashiers in stores are young people and seem to be personally offended when you bring a scan error to their attention for some reason. And a scan error seems to fall under that "questioning the price" thing that seems to be a cultural no-no.

I don't really understand this because even working in retail before if someone questioned the price that was an issue and we needed to go check the price and then do what was necessary to fix the price (pull a tag, change a sign, re-label mislabeled perimeter product, update the system, whatever it was we needed to do to get the error fixed we made sure it happened promptly). I was glad when a customer brought a price error to our attention because it gave us the chance to fix the issue. There were usually mistakes on ad change days from old tags, tag errors, or actual scan errors where some variety of something didn't scan on sale, and that was just part of the ad change day. Regardless of what the issue was we were always able to fix it back then.

Now in the case of my above experience with Target there is the thing: the store had no way to "fix the issue" other than doing a price override. I don't think the store can manually make something go into a Circle promotion and since this price was displayed on the price scanner including that Circle promotion I doubt the store had a way to make it so the Circle promotion didn't show on the price scanner. The store's hands are tied. There is nothing they can do but the price override then hope no other customers call them out on the error or they'll be doing overrides all day. Maybe this is also why the employee seemed frustrated.

[Romr123]

A-men.

Just had an objectively good experience with a SCO clerk at the good Target nearby. They have started complicating the Circle program where in-store clearance (short-date) fouls up the Circle discounts unpredictably. This SCO clerk was pleasantly attitudinal (sassy but not disrespectful....a good match with this inner-ring suburban location) as I'd bought 2 short dated bagged Tabitha Brown salads which were a BOG25% off and an apparently discontinued G&G block cheese which didn't come up on SCO. She was on top of the transactions, used her tools, was competent and had a good sense of urgency.

There have been far less pleasant encounters on pricing at Target at the other stores in the area.

[storewanderer]

A-men.

Just had an objectively good experience with a SCO clerk at the good Target nearby. They have started complicating the Circle program where in-store clearance (short-date) fouls up the Circle discounts unpredictably. This SCO clerk was pleasantly attitudinal (sassy but not disrespectful....a good match with this inner-ring suburban location) as I'd bought 2 short dated bagged Tabitha Brown salads which were a BOG25% off and an apparently discontinued G&G block cheese which didn't come up on SCO. She was on top of the transactions, used her tools, was competent and had a good sense of urgency.

There have been far less pleasant encounters on pricing at Target at the other stores in the area.

So it seems Target is having scan accuracy issues with this Circle pricing scheme. I previously did not encounter these types of overcharges at Target where a discount price during valid ad dates did not scan.

Previously the types of overcharges I experienced from Target were the simple "shelf tag on shelf does not match scanned price," "items in front of clearance sign and % off scanned does not match % off on sign," or "expired ad tag left up."

[Romr123]

Yeah, I've had some strange produce pricing situations, where on-package 75 cent coupons for Organic Valley salads conflicted with the sale/Circle 2/$6 pricing (regular price $3.49)...instead of ringing $3 less .75 they knock out the sale price, take it to the full 3.49 price then give you the 75 cents off. I just avoid it now...this is at the store that always gives problems with coupons.

[ClownLoach]

Yeah, I've had some strange produce pricing situations, where on-package 75 cent coupons for Organic Valley salads conflicted with the sale/Circle 2/$6 pricing (regular price $3.49)...instead of ringing $3 less .75 they knock out the sale price, take it to the full 3.49 price then give you the 75 cents off. I just avoid it now...this is at the store that always gives problems with coupons.

There is some weird issue with Target and their system with coupons. Their old POS system could apparently be "hacked" with these coupons. Some specific sequence of digits on the UPC would work with their system to make items free or nearly free. They were having people basically stealing game consoles with these coupons that would trick the register into making them a dollar or so, never free of course so the thief could claim they did pay and didn't know the coupon was a fraud. They have now created some sort of database of "real" coupons as researched by their corporate office clowns, and if they don't find the coupon then it must not be real as it doesn't get into their database. The next issue becomes those circle offers where the logic in the system is discount from X to Y price, so if the price has to be changed because the coupon doesn't work then the offer doesn't go through. They have overly complicated things and need to stop all these weird offers and just sell it for one price.

[storewanderer]

Yeah, I've had some strange produce pricing situations, where on-package 75 cent coupons for Organic Valley salads conflicted with the sale/Circle 2/$6 pricing (regular price $3.49)...instead of ringing $3 less .75 they knock out the sale price, take it to the full 3.49 price then give you the 75 cents off. I just avoid it now...this is at the store that always gives problems with coupons.

There is some weird issue with Target and their system with coupons. Their old POS system could apparently be "hacked" with these coupons. Some specific sequence of digits on the UPC would work with their system to make items free or nearly free. They were having people basically stealing game consoles with these coupons that would trick the register into making them a dollar or so, never free of course so the thief could claim they did pay and didn't know the coupon was a fraud. They have now created some sort of database of "real" coupons as researched by their corporate office clowns, and if they don't find the coupon then it must not be real as it doesn't get into their database. The next issue becomes those circle offers where the logic in the system is discount from X to Y price, so if the price has to be changed because the coupon doesn't work then the offer doesn't go through. They have overly complicated things and need to stop all these weird offers and just sell it for one price.

That is a programming error. They need to modify the discount hierarchy so manufacturer coupons are the "bottom" of the hierarchy and the "last thing" to apply.

Last time I had problems with paper coupons that were attached to items at Target, scanning an error of "this coupon is not accepted at Target," the employee did a price override for the amount of the coupons.

Walgreens and CVS also have coupon validation systems like this. Basically if the coupons do not get run through this validation system, the store will not be reimbursed for them. They can manually enter coupons but they won't get reimbursed.