Home of Economy News

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Spring Fishing Ad

I’m a bit late on the fishing ad.  So here it is:

I think we did a good job on our product selection.  That’s a great price on the minnow bucket.  I’ve seen it advertised for 10 pucks a lot of the time.

The fishing rod sale should attract a wide spectrum of the fishing public.  And letting the customers know that we have Rapala lures is a very good thing.  That’s a great brand and we love to associate H of E with great brands.

Then we have the big scoops of live bait.  The one thing that should get the consumers in the store is live bait each and every time they go fishing.  At that point you have a chance to buy any of the stuff we carry across the store.  We feel we save money by selling it by the scoop rather than counting it out.  Plus its good PR!

Finally we have the marine batteries.  When you think about it we sell a lot more marine batteries to fisherman than we do fishing line.  It’s thinking a bit outside of the box but it’s a very good thing for us.

I once had a friend of my brother in law that lived south of Fargo say that he’s shopped everywhere between Fargo and Lake of the Woods and we have the best prices on fishing.  My brother in law said that this guy was the type to obsess over the pricing.  That’s nice to know. 

Daily Lunch Specials

Daily Lunch Specials
Served at 11:30

Soup, sandwiches, doughnuts, cookies, and free coffee are served daily!

May 31 - June 4
Monday - CLOSED for Memorial Day.
Tuesday - CHICKEN STRIPS – AUGRATIN POT. - COLESLAW
Wednesday - TACO SALAD – Small BEVERAGE
Thursday - ROAST BEEF – MASH. POT. GRAVY – CARROTS
Friday - FISH BURGER – COLESLAW – CHIPS

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Summer Savings Flyer

I don’t have time to go over the flyer and talk about it.  I’ve got a meeting right now to plan the July flyer.  I’ll get through this in a bit.  Even if nobody likes it, I think it helps ME to write about what I like about the flyers and what I don’t.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Daily Lunch Specials

Daily Lunch Specials
Served at 11:30

Soup, sandwiches, doughnuts, cookies, and free coffee are served daily!

May 24 - May 28
Monday - PORK CHOP – MASH. POT. GRAVY – G.B.
Tuesday - SLOPPY JOE – POT. SALAD – CHIPS
Wednesday - BURRITO – SM. BEVERAGE
Thursday - MEASTBALLS – MASH. POT. GRAVY – G.B.
Friday - CHICKEN CEASER WRAP – CHOICE OF SOUP

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Begging Strips for Your Best Friend

Today we got up the new treats from Purina.  The big seller in this line is Begging Strips.  I don’t know why they call them that.  My dogs don’t beg.  They demand.

Like the Purina pet foods I posted on the other day, we’ve got a pretty good offering of the treats.  Of course what sells in the other stores doesn’t always go here and sometimes what we sell doesn’t do as well in other stores.  I’m sure we’ll do good on the Begging Strips, but we’ll have to play it by ear to see what goes in the other treats. 

Monday, May 17, 2010

Purina Pet Foods Are Now Available at H of E

We’re excited to be no able to offer Purina Dog and Cat foods to our customers.  We’ve been working on this for a while but we weren’t going to do it until we were able to offer it at a competitive price.

Some might wonder why we’re doing this since we do so well with the Science Diet.  Science Diet is great, but people have their preferences.  If we don’t offer what they want they’ll get it somewhere else.

Here we have Dog Chow.  At one time that was the #1 brand name in the market.  I think that the premium products has taken over that but it’s still a powerful brand.

We do have the Beneful product.  I haven’t been educated on this stuff yet, but I think that this is the Purina entry into the high quality food. 

We do have the smaller packages.  On the right you see the famous Puppy Chow.  We’ve got that in large bags as well.

And we do have the Friskies brand of Cat Food now.  I guess this is an huge player in the market.  We don’t do our share of cat food in the Science Diet line. We do do VERY well in the lower priced product from Dura Life.  Maybe it’s the Friskie brand that we’ve been missing.

It’ll be interesting.  We’ve had Superific growth in the pet food lines and this is just one more thing that will make us a destination spot for your pet food. 

Friday, May 14, 2010

New Wrangler Ad

Here’s our latest Wrangler ad.  This isn’t exactly the form we’ll be running it in.  We’ll put in some items and prices into the ad when we actually PAY for the ad to run.

I think it’s a great ad.  Like our snowmobile ad it’s something that I think the customers will pay attention to. 

When it comes to advertising I think you always have to be thinking about just how the ad is going to sell product.  But you can’t just think about selling that product.  You have to think about how it builds that brand and the brand of the store by itself. 

I think this helps the public know that we are a big player in Wrangler Jeans (and other clothing.)  After all how many local retailers are running ads like this?  That will help sell product and build the Wrangler and H of E Brand.  The other thing that will be added is the price and item that will let them know specifically that we have a buy that they want to participate in. 

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Daily Lunch Specials

Daily Lunch Specials
Served at 11:30

Soup, sandwiches, doughnuts, cookies, and free coffee are served daily!

May 17 - May 21
Monday - LASAGNA – GARLIC TOAST
Tuesday - TATOR TOT HOTDISH – G. B. - DINNER ROLL
Wednesday - 2 SOFTSHELL TACOS – CHIPS & SALSA – SM BEV.
Thursday - FRENCH DIP SAND. W/ AJUS – BAKED POT. COLESLAW
Friday - B.L.T. - SUMMER FRESH PASTA – CHIPS

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Daily Lunch Specials

DAILY LUNCH SPECIALS
SERVED AT 11:30

Soup, sandwiches, doughnuts, cookies, and free coffee are served daily!

May 10 - May 14
Monday - CHICKEN FETT. ALFREDO – GARLIC TOAST
Tuesday - COUNTRY FRIED STEAK – MASH. POT. GRAVY – CORN
Wednesday - TACO SALAD – SM. BEVERAGE
Thursday - MEATLOAF – BAKED POTATO – CORN
Friday - CHICKEN/BACON/SWISS SAND. / CHOICE OF SOUP

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

May Lawn and Garden Ad

Here’s our new Lawn and Garden department ad.  Lawn and Garden is a difficult area to handle right.  We want to point out how we have everything you need for your lawn and garden.  It’s pretty hard to do that in as 30 second ad. 

Instead we’re leading with some hot prices on items and hoping that the customers associate us with having what they need.

It’s my opinion that we’ve got the most complete selection of lawn and garden products, at least as far as our flagship Grand Forks store.  Where else can you buy your mower and have it fixed if it’s needed and buy the nicest bedding plants in town and get the Guaranteed Lowest Price on your lawn chemicals and buy your mother a new garden shovel for mother’s day and get lawn furniture at an opening price point and heirloom quality.

I think we’re the only place for all of that and our regular customers know that.  But it’s a tough thing to get customers that aren’t regulars to become aware of that. 

Monday, May 03, 2010

Reset of Sports, Housewares and Toys in Williston

Barb’s crew in Williston has been working like heck to reset the Sporting Goods, Housewares and Toy area.  For those of you not from the area those departments are in an addition to the store and almost are on their own.

Barb’s been sending me pictures of the progress.  However she waited until the project was all but over before she sent me the pictures of that part of the store before they started.

That’s about how it looked all along.  I guess that’s what I expected to see when I came into the store so I didn’t really see that we were that bad.  But when I look at the after pictures I can see that we were in need of a facelift.

I think that’s a big wow!  Before she got into this project she totally and completely redid the clothing departments. 

Looks great guys!

Sunday, May 02, 2010

A Great Deal on Fighting Sioux Windshirts

H of E is offering an outstanding price on some high quality windshirts.  We’re able to offer this price because we’re buying a regular stock price and having a local but authorized shop to add the Sioux logo on the product.

Because of that we are able to have a price of $25.97 which is an outstanding bargain.  We ran through our first batch in a couple weeks.  Right now the rack in Grand Fork is full, but that won’t last long.  We can ship these into another store if there’s a request. 

The jackets themselves are very well made.  We use the same thing as alternative winter uniform shirt for our team members who want a little extra warmth on the job.  We picked these because of how well the shirts hold up. 

These jackets come in three colors, black, tan and green.  My pictures don’t do them justice. 

Saturday, May 01, 2010

New Carhartt Fire Resistant Ad

So we’ve been seeing great growth in the FR line.  We not only carry products from Carhartt, we have Wrangler and Walls FR gear as well.  Still Carhartt is about 75% of our volume and it makes sense to me to build on our great relationship with Carhartt.  After all even if a person who sees this ad doesn’t need FR they still need Carhartt stuff.  Everyone that’s cool needs Carhartt. 

Earlier in the month we had a training session with the Carhartt FR trainer.  I was shocked to see how standard fabrics burn after an electrical explosion.  The explosion is over while the standard jackets and pants keep burning.

The Carhartt fabrics actually have the fire killing chemicals embedded in the fabric.  By magic I suppose.  I was impressed that Carhartt tests their stuff for safety after 200 washings.  Most of the others test them up with 100 washings.  The Carhartt guys say that’s because their stuff lasts that long so they feel they have to test it for as long as it lasts.

Friday, April 30, 2010

The Sunshine Savings Flyer

This is the flyer coming out this weekend in the Sunday papers, if available.  This is a big change for us.  We’ve ALWAYS been a weekday delivery.  Unfortunately the newspaper industry is losing a lot of customers during the week. 

We’re hoping that the greater exposure gives our sales flyers even more of a boost.  Over the last few years we’ve doubled or tripled the effectiveness of our sales flyers.  We feel that this is a way to keep the momentum going. 

This flyer goes out on Sunday, but we usually have our flyers running a day before to give our regular customers an heads up in the store.  We’ll have copies of the flyers available for you to pickup tomorrow. 

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Greenhouse Opens May 1st

Sorry for the poor picture quality.  I took this one through the window in the advertising office.  It was raining you see, and I didn’t want to get my hair wet.

This should be a great year for the Greenhouse.  Planting the last couple years has been later and later because the weather hasn’t cooperated.  We’re almost a month ahead of last year.  If a person gets their basic garden down by mothers day they’ll likely find some other projects they can add to their wonderful garden.

This rain is going to help as well.  It should warm up the soil as well as cut the dust.  My farmer friends are going to be happy as well.

So check us out this weekend.  Our greenhouse customers tell us we have the nicest plants in town year after year.