DAILY LUNCH SPECIALS
SERVED AT 11:30
May 3 - May 7
Monday - SPAGHETTI – GARLIC TOAST
Tuesday - CHICKEN STRIPS – AU GRATIN POTATOES - COLESLAW
Wednesday - BURRITO – SMALL BEVERAGE
Thursday - ROAST PORK – MASHED POTATOES. GRAVY – CARROTS
Friday - BACON CHEESEBURGER – MAC. SALAD – CHIPS
Sometimes walking through the store can surprise even me. I hadn’t noticed this until someone pointed it out to me. This is a cool marketing idea.
What we have here is a thermos made up to be a shotgun shell. Cool idea.
This would be a perfect gift for fathers day. Unfortunately we’re almost sold out, so if you’re interested get your butt in soon.
The thermos says that it keeps liquids hot or cold. How does it know what to do?
A couple years ago we decided we would make every effort to become the go to place for Weber Grills.
The Grill market seems to be splintering. The big box stores have decided to focus on their own brands of grills so that they can make a better margin. That pretty much left the number one known brand in the market to businesses like us.
We’ve been very happy with what we’ve done so far. For last week our sales were up 300% over two years ago.
We’re running this commercial to let the public know that they can get Weber Grills at the Guaranteed Lowest price at Home of Economy. You won’t find them advertised cheaper anywhere.
Here’s our new Lawn and Garden Flyer. Earlier this year we changed the people that design and print our flyers due to the new guys giving us a fantastic price.
We couldn’t turn down the bid, but we did have some concerns about keeping the quality of our flyers. This is the second one and I think it looks pretty darn good.
This flyer runs a couple more weeks and it looks like we for once guessed on the weather. You hate to have a spring flyer when the weather’s crummy.
Here’s the latest, greatest Science Diet ad.
Science Diet has been reducing their pricing in order to make themselves more affordable by the consumer. We’re glad to be able to offer these lower prices.
This ad features large breed dog food that’s been tested to help the joints and other problem areas on large breed dogs.
The St Bernard in the ad is our Sabocca. He’s coming up on seven years ago. He had to have some surgery done a year ago. He tore a ligament in his knee. The veterinarian told me that all of the blood levels on him were perfect.
The small puppy in the show is our Felina. She’s now a mother herself. We made sure to let our friends and family that adopted her puppies were to use Science Diet puppy food. The food is tested to boost both brain development and agility.
Nike/Bauer Hockey has a recall on their hockey sticks. The models that have been recalled and information pertaining to the recall are in the images below. We have all of this information posted in each one of our locations. If you have any further questions about the recall you can call any one of our stores or go to http://www.bauer.com for more information.
Yesterday we had a first of a kind meeting (for us). We pulled almost all of the full time clothing people and store managers and had an all day training meeting for them.
We started with a very interesting meeting on Carhartt Flame Resistant clothing. This is an area that we are growing very quickly in. They had quite a few videos in their presentation of mannequins getting burnt up and some real life pictures of injured people. The picture that amazes me the most is the one where a worker had rolled up the sleeves of his FR shirt. The exposed arm was blackened (ugh!). The skin underneath the shirt looked just fine.
One thing to keep in mind is that this isn’t fireproof clothes. It will burn when there is a flame applied to it. However it self extinguishes through the magic of technology (meaning I don’t understand it) within two seconds. The clothing will of course be ruined, but it should give a worker a chance at life.
After the FR program we had a lesson on displays of Carhartt merchandise. Carhartt is our #1 Vendor in both sales and gross profit. It’s important that we do the best job possible with this line.
After that we shifted to workboots. We had factory representatives from Carhartt/Red Wing, Wolverine, Justin Boot, Georgia Rocky and Caterpillar Boots. We do great with all of those lines and it was really interesting to learn about all the neat advances in boot technology that they are offering.
A real growing area is waterproof boots. We were surprised to hear that they don’t recommend treating waterproof boots with mink oil. That plugs the pores of the leather and make the boot hotter. Also the moisture will stay in the boot rather than leaving. They said you can use silicone or camp dry if you want to protect the leather.
The water proof boots generally have a layer of water resistant product (such as Goretex or a product that does the same sort of thing.)
They all agreed that wearing proper socks is vital in the case of waterproof boots. You don’t want to wear a cotton sock, because it will retain moisture and get your foot wet (and cold). They recommend a layered system to pull the water away.
Clothing and boots are a growing category for us. We think that having more meetings just with the clothing sales team is the way to keep that going. Our next meeting will be via computer and we’ll see how that goes for us.
Every week we have a conference call with our store managers. Yesterday I asked the store managers how many of them have been getting rain. Everyone told me that it had been raining.
I heard yesterday was the record for precipitation for Grand Forks.
None of this looks good for the spring flood. We’re doing what we can to be ready to help our customers. We actually take quite a bit of pride in being here when there is an emergency.
During our conference call we discussed on things to work on for the following week. All of the store managers were committed to getting our flood preparation stuff out in prominent spots. The two areas they were specifically concerned with were rubber knee boots and Wayne pumps.
I shot a couple pictures of the Grand Forks displays of pumps and the Minot store manager posted a picture of his endcap right when you come in the door.
These two are in the Grand Forks store. The top is a pallet display by the South door. The other one is an endcap back where we always have pumps.
This is the Minot endcap. This should be our top producing endcap. It’s right when a customer walks into the store. The idea is to firmly place in the customers’ minds that we are the place to go for pumps. We keep the pumps on sale for the entire flood season every year. That way the public knows that we’re doing what we can to help them get through this.
This is a picture of a five and an half Pacer pump. It has two inch input and output. It moves a ton of water for sure. The engine is Briggs and Stratton’s high quality Intek commercial grade engine. These are a great buy at $249.99.
I see we’ve been able to keep the price on that Pacer pump that low for long enough for the sign to get very shabby. That’s a good thing for the consumer.
Our last flyer had a $7 rebate on Science Diet. The flyer is over but the rebate is good until the end of March.
If you want to try out the best pet food for your pet’s health, it’s the perfect time to start. I feed Science Diet to our dogs and we’re very happy with the results.
A year ago we had a tour of the Science Diet research center and their canned food facility and we were extremely impressed with the science diet commitment to providing the best nutrition for your pets. I wrote up my impressions at the time.
http://homeofeconomy.net/site/science_diet_pet_nutrician_center_tour/
One of the things that we learned about was about the Science Diet Light dog food. “Light” or “Lite” on a pet food is a legal definition. There’s a certain number of calories per volume they must be under. Most weight control products sold for pets can’t meet this standard so they can’t use the word “light” to describe their product.
We put our big dogs on the light product a year ago. During that time our Golden Retriever lost a lot of weight. He’s getting up there in years and it was gratifying that he could climb the stairs again after he lost a few pounds.
Maybe I should switch to that as well.
This year we’re doing a flood ad to get that top of mind awareness to the public that we are the place to go. The first thing we want is for the customers to know that we’re going to be in stock on Wayne pumps and we’ll have the extra stuff.
Wayne is a great line. When there’s a flooding event we get a lot of people in here that I don’t normally see buying pumps. To me that means that they’re coming here because they trust the Wayne name to protect their most valuable physical asset.
The other idea we wanted to get across is that we are honoring our guaranteed lowest price program on our flood stuff. It seems that when there’s an emergency situation that some…well nuts come out of the woodwork and accuse everyone of raising prices. I don’t think anyone in towns been doing that, and I know we haven’t. But people get a bit worried, so I thought we’d let them know that we’re going to be the place to get their flood stuff at the best price when they need a pump.
One example of what we did last year was we had to buy some suction hose from a different source. We couldn’t get our regular product and the new source was a lot higher. Rather than create any idea that we were unfairly raising prices we ate the increase. I think that any business would seriously look at doing that if they were able because you don’t want to give anyone a legitimate concern that you aren’t be fair with them.
This ad I think does a really good job of grabbing the viewers attention. I have to admit that there are maybe a few around here that don’t like it. True, it’s a bit strange. What is that guy doing shoveling out in the middle of no-where, why is the girl carrying around a shovel on her snowmobile….
I think you need to engage the consumer in your advertising rather than just blaring out how great you are, blah blah blah. Who listens?
I was walking in the back yesterday and noticed that our buyer has really stocked up on suction hose to get ready for the flood. There’s a lot of stuff besides pumps that need to be brought in in case the flooding is as bad as they’re predicting.
Not only is there the various sundries related to pumps and handling water we have to worry about having things like knee boots in stock. We take a lot of pride in being here for our customers. We’re not perfect, but I think we’re better than any of our competition.
This picture reminds me of 1997. During the week that Grand Forks was all but off limits I had to run down to Fargo in our furniture truck to pick up all of the suction hose and fittings I could get. I went to Dakota Hose in Fargo and Pleasure Land in Moorhead. I pretty much cleaned them all out of 2 inch fittings.
I-29 by Harwood had just been opened again. There wasn’t any traffic, but it was spooky driving on the narrow strip of highway sticking out from the river. I didn’t really have that much weight on, but if felt like the road was mush and was trying to pull me into the ditches.
We’re in Jamestown today doing inventory. We all got here around 3 pm. I’m excited because this is the last inventory of the season.
The store looks really good, so I expect that we’ll be done in pretty good time tomorrow. Still we’ll have to be close on Wednesday.
I had a nice surprise when I got here today. Robert had the plaque hanging below. Apparently the Jamestown Sun has a readers’ choice awards for a bunch of categories. We got the award for best hardware store last December.
You don’t get an award like that without some good people on the scene to earn the publics affection.
This may not be the most exciting post ever, but I think it’s important anyway. When we have big flood events one of the first things we run out of is drain plugs. In a normal year these don’t sell at all. But in a flood year they sell like crazy.
The problem is that if we stocked up for a big year we could be holding these for years. You can’t make money in retail having years worth of inventory.
When it comes to pumps and hose and fittings we can fill in almost right away. Last year we didn’t run out at all in those areas even though sales were several times what we normally sell.
But for some reason when drain plugs are in demand you can’t get them. Not from the distributor, not from the factory, not from anyone.
These don’t cost a lot, but when you need them you need them. They don’t take any room and they don’t go bad. If you don’t have them I’d highly recommend that you buy enough to take care of your problem drains and put them someplace that they won’t get misplaced.
You might not need them this spring, but problems always come unexpectedly in the middle of the night. This is one area you want to invest a couple buck so that you don’t have a nasty expensive mess later on.
Plus if you buy them now while we can restock you won’t be taking a plug from someone who hasn’t planned ahead and is in dire need.
Here’s our President’s Day Furniture Sale Television Ad. The President’s Day weekend is one of the top furniture sales events of the year.
I’m sure that all of our competition will have it as well. But we have something they don’t have and never will. We are the upper midwest’s leader in Authentic Amish Furniture.
Also we have the 200% low price guarantee in the furniture department Take that Big Furniture Chains!
The latest news from Home of Economy, home of the guaranteed lowest price! Visit our main website for great deals on quality products.
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