Hopefully in the next week or so we’re going to be getting this billboard up on the interstate leading to town. from the South. Last year Carhartt accounted for about 20% of our growth. We want to keep that going and this is part of our strategy.
The other thing we’re trying to do hear is to remind people driving up from the South where we are. That’s why we put the “9 minutes” on the billboard. And yes we checked the time more than once and no we didn’t speed or run any lights.
We are convinced that we can more than save a person time even if they have to drive by the stores on the south end to do it. It doesn’t seem like our competition is very concerned about getting people in and out of their store.
We’d like it for customers to stay a while, but we don’t insist upon it. If you’re in an hurry we want to get you set up as quickly as possible so that you can get on to more important things. (Just remember where to come back when you can stay a bit longer.)
Our goal at Home of Economy is to double our sales of work clothing in the next 3-5 years. That sounds pretty aggressive, but we’ve averaged 30% growth in the last two years.
In order to do that we’re going to have to devote more floor space to the work clothing. Our latest effort for that was to expand the clothing department in our Minot store.
Here are some pictures of the final product. We’re working with an older store here so I think they did a great job in upgrading our clothing department.
This is the heart of our Carhartt shop in Minot. Carhartt is a great line for us.
Here a shot of our Carhartt Jeans running back into the rest of the department. If you saw the department before you’d know that this is an huge improvement in shop-ability. Before the changeover the department was very jammed in.
Here’s some of the new area. This is product that we’ve carried for some time now. We just opened up this area to be able to do justice to the product. In the background you see our workboots. Our business in workboots has been terrific the last few years.
We need to look at some options of fixing up the floor in this area. Still we had to go to this step before we could worry about the floor.
The Cabin Fever flyer is out. We drop it in most of the daily papers on Wednesdays. However we don’t always have good options to insert on Wednesday in every markets. In some of our towns we have to go with a shopper on the day that they release. If you don’t get a local paper you can stop in the store and pick up a copy. Unfortunately our new web site isn’t quite ready to post the flyer to or it would be available there.
We also give our regular customers the chance to pick up the flyers as a “pre-release” in all stores on Tuesday before the publish date of Wednesday. We always have the prices scanning early anyway because we want a chance to fix any problems with items not scanning at the right price.
Our flyers generally run at least 2 1/2 weeks. This flyer runs from today until March 8th. Most retailers are unsuccessful running flyers for this long, but we don’t see much of a drop off from the first week to the last.
This is a tough time of the year to advertise a lot of products as we are for the most part between seasons. When that happens we fall back to the basics and try to build up awareness for the things we sell all year, like animal foods and tools.
One of the big specials in this flyer is that if you purchase a 44 pound bag of Science Diet Adult or Adult Large Breed Dog Food you will get a ten dollar H of E gift card. This is a great value.
We are also using the flyers to build awareness that we have Flame Resistant Clothing. Many of you know that this is the next big thing with OSHA. Home of Economy is already number one in workwear in North Dakota. We are going to ensure that we do what it takes to take the leadership in this important category.
Things are picking up for the farmers. Out west it’s calving season and we’ve got specials on the products they need on pages 4 & 5.
We’ve had a lot of rain and snow in the last four months. I think flooding is a concern across the state. On page 6 we’ve got some of our most popular pumps for sale for those that want to be prepared early. We’ve got these in stock today and we will do what it takes to have pumps no matter what. Our main pump line is Wayne pump which is a great line. Not only are they very reliable if they are used properly, Wayne has always taken great care of us through the various flood emergencies we’ve seen.
On the back page you’ll see Tires and Batteries. These are crucial lines for us that you’ll see on the back of every flyer.
We used to not do any flyers in January, February and early March. We didn’t think that anyone was out shopping. Boy, were we missing the boat. Since we went after the business we’ve been getting a lot better start to our years.
Thanks to all of our great customers. Hope to see you soon.
