Chain Possibly on the Verge of Losing It's Identity
Pros
* Excellent employee discount (20% standard on 95% of items), occasional 30% or 40% employee shopping nights. * Management has some good benefits including quarterly 3 day weekends, paid family medical and performance based bonus program * 100+ locations, constantly growing, company gives solid appearance * Paid health insurance (single) at associate level for full-timers * If you're a good merchandiser and a fast learner, putting out product can be fun * Very fast paced, no two days are the same * Some product is a genuine, unbridled bargain. Sometimes you have employees scrambling to see new product and all you hear are "oohs" and "ahh"s. THAT'S the kind of stuff that's fun to put on the floor. When WE can be excited about it, we can get our customer base excited about it * Company is extremely passionate about donating to charity (which can eventually be a con because our customer base is beginning to grow tired of being constantly accosted at POS to donate to charities they may not be familiar with or care about).
Cons
* Poorly implemented new freight program that rewards speed over quality, presentation and correct adjacencies and categorization of product * Limited amount of internal promotion, very limited success in training associates to be management, limited success with management turnover overall. * No formal merchandising training or standard, giving a terribly uneven look to the stores * Bloated upper management that seems to exists solely to usurp direction from other upper management * Rapidly shrinking work-force due to reduced hours which equals recovery standards that suffer more and more every day * Issues with merchandise variety: Sharp decline in "exciting closeouts" or "awesome deals" the company was founded on. Too many purchases from buyers are total "dogs" that haunt the shelves for years and permanently monopolize valuable space as they gradually slide to "obsolete". Too many high ticket items that do not sell when our customer base was trained to shop us for basic items at good prices, which we occasionally fall short on now.