Here’s a picture of the new Minot store across the street. The old store is in the picture left of the new store. The new entry is going to be great once the finishes are put on.
Most of the construction is done with a lot of the finish work and electrical yet to be done.
We are hoping to start setting up around the 12th of September with a soft opening in the first week of October.
]]>Tonight as I was going to bed I checked the GF Herald’s web site and saw that a number of well meaning but mostly mistaken people have commented about us in the comment section of the Herald’s story on Walmart. I felt I had to correct a few misplaced perceptions about how we compete with Walmart.
http://topics.areavoices.com/2012/07/17/second-grand-forks-walmart-proposed/
First of all we’ve never had so much competition and Home of Economy has never been stronger. Certainly we’ve had to change with the times and the oil business out west has helped us a lot but we believe that competition makes us better. We compete with Walmart in five of our six stores and when they’ve built close to us we’ve benefited by their traffic.
One person has commented that we have a “high” price structure. In the areas that we are strong in we are very price competitive. Certainly we aren’t always cheaper than the discounters loss leaders, but then again, they aren’t always as cheap as we are on our special deals. Walmart may have a great deal on bathroom tissue, but there are times when we’re able to offer a deal just as good as what they do.
There were some comments about our customer service not being as good as they’d like. And I have to admit that I know we can do better. We’re always striving to improve what we can do. However I sometimes think that we’re held up to a higher standard than other stores. I go into our competitors and generally I can’t find anybody. On the other hand there are times when I do find someone in another store that does a great job. I think we’re more consistent in giving good service than our competitors.
Of course we always need to do better when it comes to customer service.
It’s a rare thing for us to loser a Team Member to one of our competitors. Our full-time hours, great benefits and family atmosphere are hard to beat in the retail job market. While we don’t like to lose good people we do understand that people are going to leave the retail industry for what may be a better fit for the people moving on.
One of the comments said that they hoped that we would be doing some expansion. We’ve done some in the last few years. We’ve opened up in Jamestown, moved to a bigger location in Grafton. Right now we’re working on a huge upgrade for the Minot market. We’re also just in the preliminary stages of looking at an expansion in Williston.
I appreciate the concern expressed on the Herald’s web site. But we’re doing well and getting better.
]]>
.jpg)
Just three weeks ago I was out in Minot looking at an empty gravel parking lot. Today the walls of the building are completely up.
This is a picture of what will be the front entry of our new store. The front entry way is going to be mostly glass so there aren’t any full concrete walls panels left to go.
.jpg)
This view is very interesting. This shows our new store on the left with the old store on the right. Not only is the building nearly twice as long in back the new store will be about twice as deep. This shot really shows the kind of improvement we’re bringing to Minot.
]]>.JPG)
The groundwork is nearly done. We’ve got our geo piers down as much as 40 feet below the floor of the store. The building site has been leveled with gravel (granular material) and they are building the footings around the building.
.JPG)
We’ve been at it for a couple months and I wouldn’t blame someone who drove by from wondering if we were just adding to our parking lot. That’s going to change immensely in the next month. The wall panels are pretty much all completed and are sitting in the Wells Concrete lot in Grand Forks. Next week they’ll start putting them up. At the same time the steel columns and ceiling joists will be going up to tie the entire building system together.
In the matter of three or four weeks we are going to have the shell of the building up. I can’t wait to see it.
]]>.jpg)
The building site for our new store in Minot sits on top of an old coulee. There’s as much as 35 feet of fill in some places. We suspect that the fill was put in by the road department when they built the roadways in that area.
You can’t build anything on top of soil like that so we are having to stabilize the soil. What we’re doing is having a specialist come in and drill 640 holes down to the good soil. Then gravel will be packed into the holes. Once they’re done, in about a month, we can build on top of their work with no problems.
It’s a pretty cool process. We have the best location in town, perhaps in the entire state. We’re really glad that we can rehabilitate the site and be able to use it.
]]>.jpg)
I’m going to try to post here more often to keep the public up to date with the projects that we have going on.
Here’s a new rendering of the Minot store with the signage included on the building. Since we have such a great location we’re going to use as much signage on the building as we can.
I think this is going to be a great store.
]]>
Our venerable sign is being redone. We are going to have it taken down and have everything redone. As far as I know the sign has been there untouched for 50 years. You can see in this picture that it’s certainly time.
We intend on keeping the neon. The company doing the refurbishing thought that we should update the neon to LED’s but to me that doesn’t replace the classic neon look.
]]>The store will be three times as large as our current building. While it won’t be overly fancy it will be a huge step up from what we currently have.
We haven’t been that good at keeping up with our news site, but this site will be a great way to keep people informed of what’s going on.
We plan on doing quite a bit of hiring for the new store before we open. If you’re interested in getting in on the ground floor of our Minot upgrade, now would be a good time to apply.
]]>We are opening up at 8am with our Giant Christmas Gifts flyer PLUS a one day only sale.
So go ahead and sleep in a bit on Friday and we’ll have the coffee on for you at 8 am.
]]>
Monday: Lasagna - Garlic Toast
Tuesday: Tator Tot Hotdish - Green Beans - Dinner Roll
Wednesday: Taco Salad - Small Beverage
Thursday: Roast Beef - Mashed Potatoes - Gravy - Carrots
Friday: Turkey/Bacon Wrap - Choice of Soup
Here’s our testimonial ad that we’ve ran since the summer. We normally only do ads with item and price, but once in a while it’s nice to try to establish your identity out in the marketplace.
I thought this ad turned out well and it hit a number of really big categories like Tires, Batteries, Honda, Carhartt, FR.
This is the first ad we’ve posted for some time. Formally I posted them on Yahoo Video due to bandwidth considerations here in Grand Forks. We’ve upgraded so we’ll start posting the videos to Youtube which isn’t going to disappear like Yahoo Video did.
]]>Home of Economy has had layaway for as long as I’ve been around. We think long and hard about taking away a service that our customers need.
Layaway isn’t a cheap service to offer. The biggest cost is what to do with the products if someone doesn’t pick up the products. A lot of the time the season for those products (toys at Christmas for example) is past and we wind up selling the products for a discount.
On the other hand it’s a service that many of our customers have appreciated over the years and we’ve never been willing to tell them no.
The actions by these national retailers show that we’ve been right all along.
]]>
This year we made the commitment to be your Honda Power Equipment Headquarters in our stores in Williston, Minot, Devils Lake, Jamestown, Grafton and Grand Forks. It’s certainly been worthwhile as our sales on generators, pumps and lawn mowers exceeded our expectations.
Now we’re making room for the Honda Snowblowers. We had a lot of snow last year so we expect that a lot of people have saved their money to buy a Honda Snowblower this fall.
If you want to get the best snowblower you’ll want to buy the Honda which has reach the acme of perfection in electric start snowblowers. They are a great tool that we need up here in the North.
They’re in the stores now and remember we have them at the Guaranteed Lowest Price.
If you want more details you can get the crib notes at the Honda Power Equipment website. http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/products/requestbrochure.aspx
]]>The Legion did a story on the back page of their newspaper and were nice enough to give us some publicity.
]]>