Encouraging retailers to restock TFs

At the TF meet on Saturday, Robzy discussed a strategy he used for encouraging retailers to restock.

Usually staff are encouraged to take available stock and spread it out over the available pegs, to maximise the appearance of stock. Robzy has devised the cunning plan to take the stock and fit it onto the smallest number of pegs/shelves to minimise the appearance, and hopefully persuade the staff to get new stock to fill the vacant space.

I was instantly enamoured of this idea, and wondered if anyone else had had any success with this or similar strategies?

but that might backfire when they dont sell and have a heap of toys clogging things up

I do like the plans use of cunning and deceiving though, top marks!

I often tidy the TF shelves up a bit as I'm inspecting them (someone once saw me doing this and throught I was a staff member and asked me a question) but I've never thought of this. It's an interesting idea.

I never did any work when I did work at Target, I'm definitely not going to start now that I'm not working there

If you're gonna do that you may as well take the existing stock, mount it sneakily in some other corner of the toy section (perhaps at another depleted product line's spot) and hope they restock.

Ultimately it wont work because kids will just make a mess of everything anyway and the staff only fix it when they eventually do a *gasp* restock.

Funnily enough, I've found that it really does work - but only at some particular stores!

Everytime I do it at Kmart Firle, for example, I go back a couple of days later and the shelves are re-stocked. Of course, I can't guarantee it will work every time at every store, but I've had enough success to keep doing it.

Basically, I just get annoyed that some TF sections have 6-8 pegs for, say, Deluxe-sized Animated figures, but each one only has 1-2 figures on it. If you "re-pack" them, you can fit most of them on 3 pegs... leaving 3-5 pegs completely empty. Having worked at Target years ago, I know that Managers HATE empty pegs... so they will inevitably make their staff re-stock (or so my theory goes :p)

Just had a cunning thought... For stores that restock by sight and not by computer inventory (reordering only when a certain number have been scanned through the registers), I was thinking that maybe if you hide a number of the toys throughout the store (and I mean, the entire store), it wouldn't be stealing, but the store would look like they need to restock because their stock is low. But you don't want to clear out the toy section of TFs, because the kids and parents still need to buy TFs, and if they can't, they may not buy any more, or a kid misses out. That sort of scenario would just mean more toys shelfwarming later, and less stock brought into the country. The best thing to do instead of hiding them throughout the store, would be relocate some of the toys to areas where kids or parents are more likely to see them while shopping for 'essentials'. The store gets the sale, and we get restocking.

If I get bored while the Missus is on one of her long Scrapbook stuff hunting expeditions, I've on occasion gone and re-organised the TF section. I find what takes the longest is emptying all the pegs and then re-sorting them so that every peg has the same figure on it.
When we had Classics, Movie, and Animated on pegs at the same time, it could take ages.

And I may or may not have been guilty of placing figures by preference, Animated toys getting the best eye level for kiddies, with movie stuff relegated to the very top pegs, and bottom shelves.

yes the missus can take that long hunting and gathering Scrapbook stuff. :D

Pretty good idea. I think I will start doing that if I have the time. Just hope the places around me aren't full of slackers

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Originally Posted by griffin

Just had a cunning thought... For stores that restock by sight and not by computer inventory (reordering only when a certain number have been scanned through the registers), I was thinking that maybe if you hide a number of the toys throughout the store (and I mean, the entire store), it wouldn't be stealing, but the store would look like they need to restock because their stock is low. But you don't want to clear out the toy section of TFs, because the kids and parents still need to buy TFs, and if they can't, they may not buy any more, or a kid misses out. That sort of scenario would just mean more toys shelfwarming later, and less stock brought into the country. The best thing to do instead of hiding them throughout the store, would be relocate some of the toys to areas where kids or parents are more likely to see them while shopping for 'essentials'. The store gets the sale, and we get restocking.

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That would make things really annoying for fellow collectors and kids though because they'd stroll in thinking that the place is completely sold out of TFs and leave the store without checking other sections. I don't know about the rest of you but when I go toy hunting I just peek at the action figure section where TFs are sold - and that's it. I don't check other toy aisles and I definitely don't check other sections like say manchester or women's apparel.

I prefer Sofaman's suggestion as it doesn't inconvenience fellow TF consumers.

Target always pushes everything to the front of their shelves to give the appearance that they're full, when in reality there's absolutely nothing behind them.

I'm always sure to push everything TF-related to the back as my special way of hinting they should get some more stuff in.

The next time I'm in there, the stuff is back at the front, and they haven't restocked.

I'm going to keep pushing it back until they learn the lesson.

My first job after school was fixing the stock up so it looks like there's heaps of it. So I think this strategy will mostly just create more work for whoevers got that job now. Its best to practice Sofa Man's strategy in the morning when there are mangers on duty and before the afternoon kids come and in and fix the store. You can really get a section manager in trouble if there's an inspection that day. :D

I used to always leave the shelves fairly tidy because I could sympathize with the staff, but I guess its been so long I don't care now.