DAILY LUNCH SPECIALS
SERVED AT 11:30
Soup, sandwiches, doughnuts, cookies, and free coffee are served daily!
May 10 - May 14
Monday - CHICKEN FETT. ALFREDO – GARLIC TOAST
Tuesday - COUNTRY FRIED STEAK – MASH. POT. GRAVY – CORN
Wednesday - TACO SALAD – SM. BEVERAGE
Thursday - MEATLOAF – BAKED POTATO – CORN
Friday - CHICKEN/BACON/SWISS SAND. / CHOICE OF SOUP
Here’s our new Lawn and Garden department ad. Lawn and Garden is a difficult area to handle right. We want to point out how we have everything you need for your lawn and garden. It’s pretty hard to do that in as 30 second ad.
Instead we’re leading with some hot prices on items and hoping that the customers associate us with having what they need.
It’s my opinion that we’ve got the most complete selection of lawn and garden products, at least as far as our flagship Grand Forks store. Where else can you buy your mower and have it fixed if it’s needed and buy the nicest bedding plants in town and get the Guaranteed Lowest Price on your lawn chemicals and buy your mother a new garden shovel for mother’s day and get lawn furniture at an opening price point and heirloom quality.
I think we’re the only place for all of that and our regular customers know that. But it’s a tough thing to get customers that aren’t regulars to become aware of that.
Barb’s crew in Williston has been working like heck to reset the Sporting Goods, Housewares and Toy area. For those of you not from the area those departments are in an addition to the store and almost are on their own.
Barb’s been sending me pictures of the progress. However she waited until the project was all but over before she sent me the pictures of that part of the store before they started.
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That’s about how it looked all along. I guess that’s what I expected to see when I came into the store so I didn’t really see that we were that bad. But when I look at the after pictures I can see that we were in need of a facelift.
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I think that’s a big wow! Before she got into this project she totally and completely redid the clothing departments.
Looks great guys!
H of E is offering an outstanding price on some high quality windshirts. We’re able to offer this price because we’re buying a regular stock price and having a local but authorized shop to add the Sioux logo on the product.
Because of that we are able to have a price of $25.97 which is an outstanding bargain. We ran through our first batch in a couple weeks. Right now the rack in Grand Fork is full, but that won’t last long. We can ship these into another store if there’s a request.
The jackets themselves are very well made. We use the same thing as alternative winter uniform shirt for our team members who want a little extra warmth on the job. We picked these because of how well the shirts hold up.
These jackets come in three colors, black, tan and green. My pictures don’t do them justice.
So we’ve been seeing great growth in the FR line. We not only carry products from Carhartt, we have Wrangler and Walls FR gear as well. Still Carhartt is about 75% of our volume and it makes sense to me to build on our great relationship with Carhartt. After all even if a person who sees this ad doesn’t need FR they still need Carhartt stuff. Everyone that’s cool needs Carhartt.
Earlier in the month we had a training session with the Carhartt FR trainer. I was shocked to see how standard fabrics burn after an electrical explosion. The explosion is over while the standard jackets and pants keep burning.
The Carhartt fabrics actually have the fire killing chemicals embedded in the fabric. By magic I suppose. I was impressed that Carhartt tests their stuff for safety after 200 washings. Most of the others test them up with 100 washings. The Carhartt guys say that’s because their stuff lasts that long so they feel they have to test it for as long as it lasts.
This is the flyer coming out this weekend in the Sunday papers, if available. This is a big change for us. We’ve ALWAYS been a weekday delivery. Unfortunately the newspaper industry is losing a lot of customers during the week.
We’re hoping that the greater exposure gives our sales flyers even more of a boost. Over the last few years we’ve doubled or tripled the effectiveness of our sales flyers. We feel that this is a way to keep the momentum going.
This flyer goes out on Sunday, but we usually have our flyers running a day before to give our regular customers an heads up in the store. We’ll have copies of the flyers available for you to pickup tomorrow.
Sorry for the poor picture quality. I took this one through the window in the advertising office. It was raining you see, and I didn’t want to get my hair wet.
This should be a great year for the Greenhouse. Planting the last couple years has been later and later because the weather hasn’t cooperated. We’re almost a month ahead of last year. If a person gets their basic garden down by mothers day they’ll likely find some other projects they can add to their wonderful garden.
This rain is going to help as well. It should warm up the soil as well as cut the dust. My farmer friends are going to be happy as well.
So check us out this weekend. Our greenhouse customers tell us we have the nicest plants in town year after year.
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.
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