Home of Economy News

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Pump Dislpays

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.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

The Science Diet $7 Rebate Is Still On

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. 

Monday, March 08, 2010

Our Flood Ad

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. 

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Wrangler Snowmobile Ad

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?

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

We’re Ready for Flood Business

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.