Lowes Planogram: Fill & Download for Free

Planogram is basically a representation that tells you how can a retailer place/display the products in order to increase the sales.Planogrammer is a person who uses planogramming skills to come up with a diagram on placement of products. Planograms can be derived using the past and current sales record against the positioning and the quantity of the products displayed. This involves many aspects like:How high or low should a product be placed.Quantity of products to be placed such that it’s visible to the customers - Number of facings.Where in the retail space should the product be placed.How Planograms can help to increase product sales?Items set at eye-level may offer superior sales to items set on the base rack. However, items on the base rack might be eye-level for children or kids. Their lower level situation may even make it simpler for kids to get items to add to their parents' carts.Examples:Placing of sugar candies at the billing counter (to attract kids/parents waiting in the queue)Placing sketch pens or craft items on the bottom shelves and so on.Placing higher margin items on better visibility racks against lower margin items.How does it help the Inventory:Helps increase sales and thus reduce the inventory.Reduces shelf life of items.Increases turnover ratio.Efficient inventory management as one can predict sales using the planogram trends.

Many fast food restaurants advertise their jobs as excellent “career choices”. If the ad says it’s a career choice, the job should be treated as a career choice internally by the company. There is a mistaken belief that fast food is a job for kids in school. Were that actually true, you would only be able to get fast food during the school year between 4pm and 9pm. Let’s take shelf stockers. Look at a planogram sometime. It’s a bit more difficult than it appears, especially when the actual shelving in use may not match the dimensions on the gram. There are new planograms sent out frequently to move products around so people don’t get complacent and just pick up what they need. If they have to look around the store, there’s a better chance they’ll buy something else. It’s not as low skilled as it appears. Restaurant servers and staff. Keeping that many people straight in one’s head is a skill. Putting up with rude customers shouldn’t even have to be tolerated, but there is certainly a skill to it. I don’t have it. If you’re rude to me, I return the favor figuring it’s the way you like to be treated. I don’t care if you’re the supreme ruler of the known universe. You put your pants on the same way I do.What you should be asking is why a top executive is worth 2,000 times more than an employee. Why does a job that pays 30–40k per year require a degree that costs 100k. Why is it that the job pays what it’s worth brings to the company, except when it’s a “low skill” job. Many of those “low skilled” jobs actually provide ALL the money the company gets…No matter what, someone will always have to make the pizza, the burgers, wash and iron clothes and clean up after people who feel they are too good to do it themselves. The same is true for those who would rather do it themselves, but don’t have time, and for those who just want to treat themselves. In effect, each of those jobs is a luxury item or service. You don’t “need” a pizza or cheeseburger, etc. You “want” it.

It was late October, 2006. In order to escape insomnia and burnout from school and a bad family environment, I went to live on a farm in Doylestown, PA, US. I worked for the local Kmart store from 9 - 6pm during the retail season (Nov - Jan). The exact ad I saw on their window right near the entrance was “Help Wanted, Good Pay”.The minimum at that time was $5.15. (Which in my opinion, was way too low compared to the cost of living in 2006). The position paid $9.25 an hour. I worked as an “Utilities and Receivings” associate. The hiring manager (HR) at the time was Mary Ann.You start off clocking in before 9am and then you need to go to Receivings, which is basically a garage door located at the back of the store. The Receivings Manager(Doug, a nice Jamacian guy in his 40s), would open this garage door every morning at 8:30 and there’d be a truck container filled to the brim with boxed items. The boxed items included dog food, seasonal items, bathroom products, stationery, games, and all kinds of junk that Kmart wanted to sell to the locals. Kind of like what you see before you lose in the game Tetris: blocks of every shape, size, and pattern filled the screen as the game over sign flashes before your eyes.We’d pull out a conveyor belt, which has rows of wheels on top. One end of the conveyor belt goes into the truck, the other end stays on the warehouse floor. That way you put a box on top, and just push. The box would zip down this conveyor belt. This is so that the items from the truck container can get to the warehouse floor in the shortest time possible. Each box weighs anywhere from 5–50 pounds. i.e stationary vs cat litter.This requires one or two guys in the truck container to push boxes down the conveyor belt. On the warehouse floor, we’d have bunch of guys to grab the boxes and put them on their respective pallets. Once a pallet is full, we shrink wrap them and pull them out onto the sales floor for the sales associates to unbox and organize onto the shelves.This process usually goes from 8am - 12pm. We have to finish the whole truck (about 2000–2500 pieces) every morning. Since the truck is docked and waiting for us to unload, the trucking company charges Kmart money for that time. So we’d have to haul ass and hurry up.Once we’re done with unloading, we’d have an hour lunch. After lunch, my job is to go out and collect carts. You’d push one cart inside another so they are attached. You do this until you get about eight or nine carts. So now you have this long chain of shopping charts right? You’d then slowly push and guide this chain of carts into a small opening at the entrance of the store so that when customers walk in, they have a shopping cart to put their items in. You’d have to watch out for cars, customers, and weave that cart snake carefully into the cart container.Also if there was a customer that needs help getting furniture into their car, you’d stop what you’re doing and help them load it.All in all, it was grueling work. You’re on your feet and doing manual labor for 8 hours straight, with an hour lunch in between, and another 15 minute break in the afternoon.In addition, they don’t allow you to clock in for 40 hours because that would be considered full time, and they’ll have to pay all sorts of benefits. Instead, you’re scheduled for 38.5 hours. That way, they just pay you hourly, and no more.Now, for my sole purpose, this kind of work lets me reset mentally, and get some exercise. I didn’t have to use my brain. I could relax, resolve my inner demons so I can hopefully relieve some of my insomnia, and get myself back on my feet.But for the guy who wants to get ahead in life, or contribute to a family, it doesn’t make sense. You literally take home $1168 every month (US tax is around 18% for this salary range). No raise. No promotion. You’re just a muscle peon that works during seasonal sales where retail traffic is at its highest.Around January, they will let you go. And if you have performed nicely and they decide that they want to keep you, they’ll cut your hours down to around ten a week. That means you work two hours a day. You take home a few hundred bucks a month. With that kind of money, you can hardly feed yourself.I soon quit Kmart, and then went to Lowe’s, and finally to Target. The work is all the same. Very blue collar. Very physical. The thing that mattered most is how many hours you get, and if you can raise a family with the money after taxes.Lowe’s was okay, but Target was better. Actually, out of all the retail places I’ve worked, Target treated me the best. I did Planogram, which was a position that started at 6:30am. It’s also grueling work because you have to make sure the shelves, theme, price tags, and items are all stocked and put exactly the way it is on their planograms. The positive is that they give you 38 hours a week year round, so you can actually have consistent income.Now, to answer your question.These non-minimum positions go unfulfilled because they have no future, no promotion, and they require the applicant to literally bust their ass for a paycheck that barely cover life expenses. With nothing leftover to save. The hours fluctuate, there are no benefits, and the cost performance of such a deal is only high for the company.Not you.People know this, or eventually will know this, and good people leave for better opportunities. So these positions go unfilled because the available pool of workers that take them are usually not educated, have some medical issues, maybe do drugs and cannot show up every morning, or simply can’t take the physical labor day in and day out, drop out. The ones that can and are fit for the position move on quickly as they figure out how crummy the situation is.How I remembered my coworkers in detail:After a few weeks on the job, I pretty much assessed where and how the drama unfolds.Aaron was a 22 y/o, who lived with his mother, and never finished high school. He had a child with his ex-girlfriend and was about 300 pounds overweight. If he lost weight, he’d look exactly like Leonardo Dicaprio from the movie Titanic. His had a light, fair complexion, with blonde hair. Due to his weight, he doesn’t seem to have a lot of ambition or energy in his life. His breaks were too long and he moved too slow. I felt terrible for the guy because even though he had potential, he does not have the know how to get himself to the next level.Then, we have Doug, the Receivings manager. He was a 45 y/o divorced guy from Jamaica. He had a very strong paternal presence about him and he treated his workers great. He understood the beauacracy of the retail environment and does his best to accommodate those around him. What I remembered most was his tiredness from life. He’d lost hope in marriage, and just simply tried to work, earn some money, and enjoy his life when he retires in a couple of years. I remembered him telling me about trying to get a Driver B license so he can drive dump trucks and earn fifty grand a year. Obviously his current managerial position at Kmart did not look promising.There was another receiver by the name of Maggie. She was a petite woman, and her geri-curl of a hair was graying but she looked to be about in her mid-fifties. Looking like something straight out of the 70's, her glasses were squarish, with curves around the corner. The frames were also gradient colored like quartz rocks.None of that bothered me one bit, as I really didn’t have any opinions on fashion. What got to me was the way she shouted and yelled at people. She was so filled with contempt that it seems like she never really said a positive word about anything or anyone. If someone made a mistake, she would be sure to let that person know in the worst way possible. I guess you can say she thrived on pointing out other people’s mistakes.When I first began, I couldn’t remember the twenty or so departments that got matched with their respective pallet locations and she was sure to yell at me for it. If I dropped it off at the wrong pallet, she would yell, throw boxes close to people, and drop them really loud in order intimidate. But it was bearable because Doug would tell me to ignore her and just keep going. Pretty soon, I made less mistakes and she’d yell less.However, there are some days where her temper would flourish and she would start throwing boxes around. By then I knew what I was doing so I wasn’t going to take any of her attitude. I also started throwing my boxes around, barely missing her as well. She got the message pretty quick and stopped her yelling completely. After that, she would make a few grunts and go about her way.Lastly, there was another guy in his 40's named Joey. Hard worker and positive attitude. But one day, I guess he forgot to take his medication and experienced a small seizure right after we finished unloading the truck. Kmart fired him right away because they did not want to deal with paying leave or have any kind of medical liability.