Home of Economy News

Monday, January 25, 2010

Inventory On For Williston?

We’re going to try to get out and do the inventory in Williston tomorrow and Wednesday.

With the oil boom out in Williston it’s very hard to get hotel rooms.  Monday and Tuesday nights were the only ones we could get.  Since we didn’t get our their our controller had an idea to charter a bus so that we can have someone rested drive us home Wednesday night after inventory.  That way we won’t need to stay the second night. 

Sounds like a good idea.  Here’s hoping we can get out in the morning and the roads are good.

Williston Inventory Has Been Postponed Due to Weather

Well the weekend blizzard finally hit on Monday.  There’s no way we can send people out of town in this storm so we’re postponing it for now.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

And Now to Devils Lake

We’re soon off to Devils Lake to count all of their stuff.  This should be an easier inventory than the Minot and Grand Forks inventory.  Not that those went too badly, but Devils Lake has less stuff than the other two and their backroom is almost negligible.

Our Schedule is to leave for Devils Lake from Grand Forks right after lunch.  We’ll close the store at 3pm and count until 11 pm or so.  Any later and we start making a lot of mistakes.  But every hour we work late on the first night means we’re home that much earlier the next.

This is also one of the stores close to Grand Forks and in the middle of Grand Forks, Minot, Jamestown and Grafton so it’s easy for everyone to get there.  We’ve started using the meeting room at the Devils Lake Casino to hold some vendor meetings because it is so convenient.

The problem with doing so many inventories is two fold.  First of all you get wore down while your regular work piles up.  The other thing is that there’s a lot of work fixing discrepancies after the inventory when you have two or three inventories.  We’re almost ready to close Minot, we’ve just started working on the Grand Forks reports and we’re off to do Devils Lake. 

It’s important to work the after inventory reports.  We cut the discrepancy in Minot 70% after the inventory.  Right now it looks pretty good. 

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Inventory Weekend for Grand Forks

Our Grand Forks store will be closing at 3pm this afternoon for inventory.  We will be counting EVERY item in the store today and tomorrow.  We’ve already got a crew working on the back rooms and the furniture department. 

Tomorrow morning at 8 am we’ll be back at it.  We’ll maybe be done around 7 or 8 Sunday.

It’s too bad we have to be closed for an entire day, but we can’t figure out how to keep the inventory accurate without doing so.  And if we don’t have an accurate inventory we won’t have the product that you need on the floor when you need it.

We’ll see you Monday morning.  Well, maybe not.  The kids are off from school and my wife is going to be out of town helping her Aunt so I have to take the day off.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Flame Resistant Clothing At Home of Economy

We are the leader in Flame Resistant Clothing in North Dakota.  We’ve been selling FR clothing from Carhartt, Wrangler and Walls Manufacturing.  We don’t sell a lot of it from Walls but they’ve got sizes up to 5X.  Last year with the new OSHA regulations we made a commitment to be able to supply FR clothing to our customers that need it.  These include electricians, welders and petroleum workers.  (I’m not an expert on the requirements.  If you have a question you should ask the safety officer in your company who ultimately is responsible for ensuring compliance. 

We’ve been reviewing our 2009 year and one of the BIG winners was the FR category.  It went from nothing to being a big deal for us.  If the category was a stand alone vendor it’d be in our top 30 vendors.  Most of the business is special order through the employers but we carry a pretty good selection in our Grand Forks, Minot and Williston stores. 

2009 was great for FR clothing at Home of Economy.  We intend to do even better in 2010. 

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

We Sell Honda Generators In 4 Stores

Late last fall we started selling Honda Generators in our Williston, Jamestown, Devils Lake and Grafton Stores.  We’d like to sell it in all stores but Honda has a policy of protecting their existing dealers.  That’s ok with me provided they’d do the same for us. 

Honda Generators are a great product.  If you have a need for a quiet generator or a generator that’s going to be run a lot of hours you can’t do better than an Honda.  We’ll keep selling the lower priced ones because there’s a market for those as well.

Here’s a short video I clipped from their product DVD.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Feed Test

I’m just checking to see how the Facebook and Twitter feeds work. 

Update:  Our in-house pro fixed it so that the Twitter feed links only go directly to the Home of Economy news site here.  There’s no point to link to our Facebook page if the real content is here.

Inventory Season

Sorry for the lack of posts last week.  We were busy getting started in our inventory season.  On Wednesday and Thursday we counted everything in the Minot store.

This weekend we’re doing the Grand Forks store.  We’ll be closing in Grand Forks around 3 pm and opening up Monday morning at 8 am.  We’ll have a crew working before we close counting the back rooms and some of the slower moving stuff.

Inventory isn’t any fun.  But if we have to keep our inventories accurate so we have the right products for our customers at the right time.  You can’t do that without an accurate inventory.  And it doesn’t seem anyone can keep them accurate without shutting down and COUNTING THE STUFF.

We’ll get done Sunday evening.  We will be back at in counting the inventory in Devils Lake next Wednesday and Thursday. 

I’ll try to keep somewhat current on the H of E news site, but it gets tough to do the extras during the inventory season.

New Battery and Tire Ad

This is such a strong Battery and Tire Ad we decided to update it when the products in it became obsolete. 

We originally ran this last fall.  The one tire style got discontinued by our manufacturer.  The Battery company changed their labels.  Aside from that we kept the same ad. 

I suppose some will wonder why we didn’t just put together a new ad since we have run this quite a bit.  It’s our understanding that consumers don’t pay that much attention to television ads.  The more you can repeat the better off you are.  What we’re trying to do is to make people think Home of Economy when they need a new set of tires or a new battery.  I think this ad does that well.

I also like the ad because it was shot in North Dakota and people will recognize the terrain.  For a second I thought they shot the ad near my home. 

I also love the start “How do you get to be #1.”  We’re the hands down leader in tire and battery sales in our towns.  We’ve got to brag about our position because I don’t think the competition is going to do it for us.