Day Eighteen
I’m going with a visual post today.
Every Borders has a Paperchase (journals, address books, pens, photo albums, etc) section. Much bemoaned by some people in our store it’s pretty popular, though the products are more upscale than the equivalent products as places like Walmart. (Of course we also have unique stuff, like wooden journals and pens.) Monday I was on the floor for the first and last hour of my shift. I spent the last hour cleaning up Paperchase, primarily condensing out products onto one display shelf, making them stick up straight and organizing them, a little bit at least, by type. We’ve gone from three double sided shelves of blank books, agendas, etc to three shelves on one side of one display.
This is what I found when I got to work this morning.
(I apologize for the low quality pictures, I was using my cell’s camera.)
Now imagine this over the whole store. Add in products left in the wrong place, all the books from upstairs being shifted, one section at a time, downstairs, 2200 books grabbed at random and shipped to another store and a mess of trash, wrappers and empty packages from people blatantly stealing and you’ll understand why we’re overwhelmed and not able to keep up with it all. (Also add in Borders messing around with our inventory system and locking us out from adjusting it at all, and, as I’ve recently learned, adding items they had scheduled to be shipped to us, but never actually shipped as being “on hand” weeks after they decided to close us down.)
And we sent off more today, and the back room has been cleaned out because we’re packing pallets tomorrow to be sent to a Michigan store. Anyone in Michigan who might be reading this, I swear we’re going to try to pack it decently, not just throw crap in boxes and seal them, which by the way is the standard way boxes arrived to us from Borders warehouses. I know personally if I am going to pack a box to send to someone I’m going to do it as efficiently as possible, not throw it all will-nilly into boxes until they look full. Shipping is not cheap.
After that I cleaned and condensed our sports section. I was trying to at least organize it by subject, but I burned through 2/3rds of my time and got through about half of it, so I had to just put everything closer together as is. It looks like this now.
(I put this picture together from two pictures to give you the full effect.)
This section used to be full. Now seven bays of six shelves each are condensed down to four bays of four shelves each, plus one and a half shelves of another (you’ll notice the top and bottom shelves only have 2-5 oversized books on them, if anything). And this is selling slowly. Most other sections look a lot worse. Cooking, for example has gone from ten bays of seven shelves to less than 6 full bays (with the top and bottom shelves of each left empty.)
Again, and we are selling slowly.
And occasionally after moving 500 pounds of books in a day and working reg where customers bring up armloads of product then walk out with two items, or haggle, or demand that you give them bags to carry their books in (or coffee) for free, you find this little treasure trove:
Where people just dump things they decide they don’t want (or didn’t intend to buy in the first place.) By the way those are all SF/F books and manga (and one cool Hello Kitty Bat) which are all on the first floor (and have been as long as I’ve worked this store) and are actually on the way out the door from the back of the store (where I found these).
Is it any wonder why we can’t find things?
Yow! I spent most of my day on Paperchase, condensing it. I’m in a 1 story store and our PC is mostly gone. I was finding empty book light boxes and empty tubes those overpriced watch bracelets came in hidden in back of the shelves. We sent a ton of misc books off but you can’t tell it by looking at the sales floor. Our shelves look a lot like yours.
Hang in there, Michele.
I found a really adorable Paperchase toddler fork/spoon set at my local Border’s – of course, I was in a week ago when things were still relatively organized. I still might pop in again this week (and probably shriek at the horror of the craziness).
Our Paperchase is mostly gone too. Thanks quichepup. You hang in there too! It’s going to be over soon.
Winona! Good luck finding it! I think I know which set you’re talking about and it sold out during the holidays in our store. If you had it last week I hope you manage to snag it!
I thankfully did snag it when I found it – will be stopping in again tomorrow to survey the damage… I mean, see if the Band on the Run CD/DVD might still be there… just in case.
I’ve loved reading your posts about the ordeal of Borders closing.
I used to own a modern lifestyle store and we sold books and music, amongst other awesome things. One thing that struck me about the Borders closings here in NC, is the wasted shelf space. And this is coming from one who owned a store and went through a going out of business sale. I found the more I was able to display the front of books, cds, vinyl, … the quicker they sold.
At the store in Apex, biographies were shoved onto like 5 shelves, with whole vertical shelves just empty. If the covers were facing outward, I’d bet they’d move quicker.
I understand that most people shopping the closing sales are going to make a mess of stuff regardless of what the staff does…having the covers out may make titles move quickly.
From my experience (I’m also a librarian)… covers sell books and covers cause books to be checked out.
Good luck with things.
Thanks for the comment. Yes, we’re trying to keep our end caps, front of the store bays and display tables full because we believe the same thing! With so much product on the shelf (pre closing that is) we couldn’t face out everything, of course. But we certainly tried some days LOL.