Wal-Mart new Policy

Wal-Mart is trying a bold move to keep customers shopping in their stores instead of going to Target. Many of their new store policies are actually Target policies that Wal-Mart has modified. Case in point; all Targets have a cut off time of 8 AM for pallet jacks on the sales floor. Wal-Mart has taken this policy and has banned all vendors from using the pallet jacks on the sales floor. That means for all those displays of soda, chips, beer etc… that are placed throughout the huge Wal-Mart Super Centers, are been placed there using nothing more than a hand cart with multiple trips from the backroom to the sales floor.

A few weeks ago I was helping a Pepsi vendor work his store in Smithfield, NC. It took us seven (7) hours to work the store. That was filling the drink isle, building 2 pallet displays near the other end of the store, fill up 2 other pallet displays and end caps plus build 2 end cap displays. We only had one 15 minute break, no lunch and a Wal-Mart manager tour constantly hovering over all the venders like Freddy Krueger in your dreams.

In an effort to keep their stores from being littered by pallets all over the store, Wal-Mart will eventually do away with pallet displays and set up end caps similar to the Target end caps by 2010. The Clayton, NC Super Wal-Mart is undergoing a remodel of this type now. One of the main reasons for doing away with the pallet displays was an incident at one of their Wal-Mart stores in Cary, NC that cost the company $5,000.

It seems a local Fire Marshal was helping his wife with her shopping when he began to count all the Wal-Mart freight, many of the nearly 100 pallets still shrink wrapped and spread left throughout the store. He then excused himself from his wife to take a look into the backroom area. There he found pallets throughout the backroom area that one had to walk almost sideways to navigate around them. As he and his wife finished shopping he drove behind the store to see a multitude of shrink wrapped merchandise on pallets in a makeshift corral by the receiving area. Needless to say an official visit was immediately made to the store.

Needless to say the store Manager had to make a trip to the main headquarters which over time the store eventually received a new store manager. Especially after 5 truck loads of merchandise were removed from the store. Wal-Mart did take this message to heart and decided they do not want a repeat of this incident. So by adopting new policies Wal-Mart is cleaning up all their stores in a series of steps.

Those being as follows:
1. It is the Vendors fault
2. Make it harder for all the Vendors to service the stores
3. Keep non-Vendor items empty or nearly empty on the shelf.
4. Take away Vendor displays, without any notice, especially if it is selling better than the Wal-Mart brands.
5. Forget that Vendors are or were customers
6. Copy Target