MEGATHREAD Signing Tips, Tricks and Quips (along with howls of despair)

[IceIceBaby]

No. I added a regular shelf. So it has 3 regular shelves and 1 3-tier.

The problem is the new transition calls for 7 strips instead of 6 now. So I end up having 4 regular and a 3 tier which makes the space pretty tight.

Based on the plano it looks like it's asking for a new 4 tier shelf.

 

[OldSchoolVet]

The problem is the new transition calls for 7 shelves now. So I end up having 4 regular and a 3 tier which makes the space pretty tight.

Based on the plano it looks like it's asking for a new 4 tier shelf.

 

[OldSchoolVet]

I was going from memory. Must be 4 regular and 1 3-tier. If we received a 4-tier, who knows where it is. 🙄

 

[Dysprosed]

No. I think that's the pog they messed up the footage on for us too.

We've been missing a tiered shelf in another book pog that we made do with what we had for a couple years, but this one is trickier to do that with.

We don't have this 4 tiered shelf either, but the POG calls for it. I believe it's AX8929? You can look it up on Mosaic, but when we tried to order it on FUSE, it didn't exist. So now i have a top shelf's worth of product and no place to put it!

The only new tiered shelves we received were for vinyl, won't work for the books though.

 

[IceIceBaby]

We don't have this 4 tiered shelf either, but the POG calls for it. I believe it's AX8929? You can look it up on Mosaic, but when we tried to order it on FUSE, it didn't exist. So now i have a top shelf's worth of product and no place to put it!

The only new tiered shelves we received were for vinyl, won't work for the books though.

Guess what myhelp response was...

"After further review, the POG is correct. SPT-Ent"

Gee, good to know.

 

[Dysprosed]

Heh. I guess the SPT team is largely outsourced to Target India. I'm not 100%, but I think many of the Label Strip issues of late, are linked to that team. I'm not sure what exactly the issue is, but some form of severe crisis of management.

 

[LuvMyPack]

We don't have this 4 tiered shelf either, but the POG calls for it. I believe it's AX8929? You can look it up on Mosaic, but when we tried to order it on FUSE, it didn't exist. So now i have a top shelf's worth of product and no place to put it!

The only new tiered shelves we received were for vinyl, won't work for the books though.

We are short four 4 tiered shelves for this reset. Plus the end cap shelves I was supposed to get a year ago and never did. Tried ordering them multiple times and never worked. And fuse was a joke. My TL and ETL couldn’t find any of the shelves I needed on it

 

[IceIceBaby]

@SigningLady

What are your thoughts on strips coming back to style?

 

[SigningLady]

@SigningLady

What are your thoughts on strips coming back to style?

Since they are switching back to traditional POGs for a lot of folded and hanging, it makes sense. My gripe about it is I have a combination of old wood/titanium shelves and new champagne/wood shelves. On the info I saw for ordering what we need to make this switch back, it doesn't look like you can order the old label strip fronts. Hoping this gets resolved for me with our remodel next year so I'll just make do until then.

From a findability standpoint, this is needed badly- especially with denim, but mostly bras. I've never liked how bras went to flex/hybrid POGs; it always looks terrible and we ended up with too much crammed into one POG w/o the footage to support it. Bras always looked better visually when they had labels used (at least for us). Neutral colors were a challenge, but everything else made sense. I've tried keeping denim striped but at some point it always falls apart, strips would help so much with this- particularly if they make the style or wash more prominent and it would also help with auditing to get replenishment in easier because the outs will be more visually apparent.

Strips will also assist immensely with multi-item pegs; I used the strips they sent a couple weeks ago for Mens Seasonal Basics because then there was no guessing on what went where and the spacing was already figured out for me......though they did fuck up a few Gold Toe socks and had them pogged to the wrong section somehow and no label on the strips.

It would be really helpful if they could send label strips for all traditional POGs to assist with spacing and multi-item spots. This will save TMs time because we all know they're not going to give us more payroll to actually set these POGs; it's hard enough right now doing some of these as flex POGs!

 

[IceIceBaby]

Since they are switching back to traditional POGs for a lot of folded and hanging, it makes sense. My gripe about it is I have a combination of old wood/titanium shelves and new champagne/wood shelves. On the info I saw for ordering what we need to make this switch back, it doesn't look like you can order the old label strip fronts. Hoping this gets resolved for me with our remodel next year so I'll just make do until then.

From a findability standpoint, this is needed badly- especially with denim, but mostly bras. I've never liked how bras went to flex/hybrid POGs; it always looks terrible and we ended up with too much crammed into one POG w/o the footage to support it. Bras always looked better visually when they had labels used (at least for us). Neutral colors were a challenge, but everything else made sense. I've tried keeping denim striped but at some point it always falls apart, strips would help so much with this- particularly if they make the style or wash more prominent and it would also help with auditing to get replenishment in easier because the outs will be more visually apparent.

Strips will also assist immensely with multi-item pegs; I used the strips they sent a couple weeks ago for Mens Seasonal Basics because then there was no guessing on what went where and the spacing was already figured out for me......though they did fuck up a few Gold Toe socks and had them pogged to the wrong section somehow and no label on the strips.

It would be really helpful if they could send label strips for all traditional POGs to assist with spacing and multi-item spots. This will save TMs time because we all know they're not going to give us more payroll to actually set these POGs; it's hard enough right now doing some of these as flex POGs!

Hopefully setting strips is better than it was 10+ years ago when I was a merchandising specialist for softline. My main gripe is trying to make the POG look full and trying to find all the items for it. Back then we weren't allowed to flex so it looked bare and ugly.

Thankfully they created virtual sales floor, I think that would help with the tying to aisle numbers and not having all these old POGs just existing. Wished we had that in my days!

Labels for bras sounds interesting, but can imagine how big of a pain it would be to reset 🥴

Thanks for the input.

 

[SigningLady]

Hopefully setting strips is better than it was 10+ years ago when I was a merchandising specialist for softline. My main gripe is trying to make the POG look full and trying to find all the items for it. Back then we weren't allowed to flex so it looked bare and ugly.

Thankfully they created virtual sales floor, I think that would help with the tying to aisle numbers and not having all these old POGs just existing. Wished we had that in my days!

Labels for bras sounds interesting, but can imagine how big of a pain it would be to reset 🥴

Thanks for the input.

From what I've seen so far of what is changing to traditional POGs between now and March, it is limited to hanging shoes, kids denim & leggings, womens denim, mens denim & chinos, and panties & bras. A lot of these have very minimal changes over the course of a year so it makes sense to have them pogged. I'm still likely going to advocate for flexing to keep presentations full and impactful- it doesn't make sense to backstock a lot of something when you don't have enough of something else. But it's going to have be smart flexing- keeping colors & cuts together.

With something like panties, I'm going to need to see how they want this executed because way back in the day it was easy with the shelves/dividers we used. With the drawers now, I'm not real clear on how labels will help. It would also help if direction was more clear and consistent with the top clear plexies for panties- I've seen stores do all of one print with all sizes represented and I've seen stores that give a representation of each style in the drawers using one size of each print. I'd like to see data on which is more effective at selling panties.

Setting bras with labels took 3 of us on Plano 2 days to complete it all, including the panties. Labels were time consuming, but overall it gave a much better presentation of the bras and separation of the styles was more clear cut, which would help with findability.

 

[happygoth]

Oh boy I'm not sure how this is going to work at my store. We can't keep our Basics POGS right, never mind jeans and bras. Should be interesting.

 

[Dead and Khaki]

It worked beautifully back in the day. Then again, that was before softlines got siloed off and lost the involvement of the Presentation team. I loved setting in softlines, and I selfishly hope they'll give us hours over there with this reinvention of the wheel.

 

[SigningLady]

Oh boy I'm not sure how this is going to work at my store. We can't keep our Basics POGS right, never mind jeans and bras. Should be interesting.

You have a fair point- our basics POGs are also usually a bit messy. Kids specifically, but that is often due to us cheating on setting them. And we fake 2 endcaps because we don't have the physical space; the last VM moved 2 fixtures together which eliminated the endcaps 🤷🏻‍♀️. Mens and womens basics for us isn't as bad because our DBO in Mens keeps up with it and I usually fix womens a couple times a month.

 

[BKop16]

1) Pretie Dec Home Xmas on Monday per schedule
2) It all arrives Tuesday without the locations on the labels.

Thanks Target.

 

[SigningLady]

1) Pretie Dec Home Xmas on Monday per schedule
2) It all arrives Tuesday without the locations on the labels.

Thanks Target.

This gives me hope my freight is coming! I am in desperate need of the new set merch- so many holes! 🫣 I never worry about pre-ties for Dec Home as we push it all to the floor regardless. We are low volume enough to almost never have backstock.

 

[allnew2]

1) Pretie Dec Home Xmas on Monday per schedule
2) It all arrives Tuesday without the locations on the labels.

Thanks Target.

H$H is vmg so nothing really to be bother about yet z let see if trim a tree will be the issue .

 

[allnew2]

This gives me hope my freight is coming! I am in desperate need of the new set merch- so many holes! 🫣 I never worry about pre-ties for Dec Home as we push it all to the floor regardless. We are low volume enough to almost never have backstock.

You can take mine all 15 pallets of it . Only problem they got backstock first 😂

 

[SugarSugar]

Annoyed Target wants to add another row of high capacity shelves for fabric care and didn't bother to send us more shelves 😡

 

[flow4areasonuno]

I'm not in signing but it's really hard to do candy up front with a box that says 1-8-2 when the shelves goes from 1-7-1 to 1-9-1

How does signing handle stuff like this?

 

[SugarSugar]

I'm not in signing but it's really hard to do candy up front with a box that says 1-8-2 when the shelves goes from 1-7-1 to 1-9-1

How does signing handle stuff like this?

Is it set properly? With checklanes, people tend to tie it and not set it or leave it overdue. Then the POG just slowly falls apart and nothing matches. More so with revisions because of time, you get very little hours to do 16+ checklanes...

 

[SigningLady]

Annoyed Target wants to add another row of high capacity shelves for fabric care and didn't bother to send us more shelves 😡

You didn't get shelves? My store did; they were in the middle of our pallet with Amp Gifting on top and Tech lockboxes underneath. We're not using them until the TL gets answer on the ChatBot about it. I do remember way back when this POG did have another row so it's not inconceivable to do it, but it's unlikely to be very safe. I remember thinking how smart it was to take out the top shelves because everything was easier to reach.

 

[SugarSugar]

You didn't get shelves? My store did; they were in the middle of our pallet with Amp Gifting on top and Tech lockboxes underneath. We're not using them until the TL gets answer on the ChatBot about it. I do remember way back when this POG did have another row so it's not inconceivable to do it, but it's unlikely to be very safe. I remember thinking how smart it was to take out the top shelves because everything was raised to reach.

I didn't see them, but since you mentioned it. I'll check again thanks.

 

[flow4areasonuno]

Is it set properly? With checklanes, people tend to tie it and not set it or leave it overdue. Then the POG just slowly falls apart and nothing matches. More so with revisions because of time, you get very little hours to do 16+ checklanes...

We only have 12 checklanes. There isn't a row 8, it's non-existent, so prolly not set right. Recently changed, I know because the thing I wanted to put there was a new candy bar we'd never had before

 

[Dysprosed]

Annoyed Target wants to add another row of high capacity shelves for fabric care and didn't bother to send us more shelves 😡

I don't think the POG needs another shelf. I'm pretty sure one of the "shelves" is just a wire basket that clips under another shelf and holds a certain size of the Downy Unstoppables. I could be wrong though, I wasn't the one that set it.