STORES Magazine - January 2008 - (Page 98)

NUTS AND BOLTS / LOGISTICS When the Truck Gets Stuck Vendor goes the extra mile to get Swoozie’s store open on time BY FAYE BROOKMAN Swoozie’s plans to open 10 to 12 stores per year traveled to the trucking company’s Chicago distribution center, where the trailer was being held, and relayed an inventory of damaged fixtures back to headquarters. He also arranged shipment of the salvageable pieces to the Texas store. “We dropped everything we were doing and, since we are a manufacturing facility, we were able to remanufacture,” says Tom Matey, F.C. Dadson’s corporate sales manager on the Swoozie’s account. Since Swoozie’s is opening 10 to 12 stores per year, there were fixtures earmarked for future stores already in the production process that could be substituted. (Because Swoozie’s was developing new fixturing, however, F.C. Dadson wasn’t able to merely pull from existing inventory.) Make up for lost time The trucking company arranged for a new trailer, and F.C. Dadson set out to make up for lost time. The shipment, originally set to arrive Thursday, made it by Saturday. The store opening schedule was preserved — eliminating costly marketing costs to shuffle advertising and promotion. Kim Reeder, Swoozie’s director of construction, credits F.C. Dadson with saving what could have been an ugly experience. “They took care of it professionally and did what we needed to get the [store] opened on time,” she says. “The most important thing was communication,” says Matey, who has had the Swoozie’s account for three years. “We made sure everyone understood the situation and jumped on it. We put a point person in place and made sure the customer was comfortable that we were doing everything that we could.” StORES O pening a new store can be stressful enough: imagine the additional teeth-gnashing if you learned that most of the store’s fixtures were destroyed in a truck accident. That’s just what happened last February when Swoozie’s, a fast-growing Atlanta-based specialty retailer, was about to open a new store in Southlake, Texas. Swoozie’s had contracted with Greenville, Wis.-based F.C. Dadson to create displays to highlight the merchant’s unique array of gifts, stationery and invitations. But adverse winter weather conditions led to the truck’s involvement in a multi-vehicle accident just south of Chicago. The result was an out-of-commission trailer filled with fixtures, most of which had been damaged and deemed unusable. To make matters worse, the entire shipment was impounded for several days as police conducted their investigation. An F.C. Dadson representative 98 STORES / JANUARY 2008 Faye Brookman is a Skillman, N.J.based writer who reports extensively on the drug store industry. WWW.STORES.ORG http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - January 2008

STORES Magazine - January 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Build a 'Bot Sneak Peek at Fashion Trends What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Cover Story: Fishing for Talent Retail CEO Compensation Research Concept2Watch E-Commerce Payment Solutions Online Merchandising POS LPInformation LP Vantage Point Newsbeat Industry Watch Cover Story: Making LP PCI-Compliant Mall Security Video Surveillance Industry Perspective Forum RFID Business Intelligence Data Management Logistics Turning Green into Gold Love of – and for – the Outdoors Loeb Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - January 2008

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