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main problems in the current store and how to solve them
In this part, I presented the main problems of the store and what could done to solve them. After staying three full days in the store observing things, shoppers and sales people interacting with the space, I managed to show to the client that structural changes should be made in order to solve issues that had a big impact in the sales. The biggest problem was that few people went up to the second and biggest floor. In order to solve that it was necessary to change the position and the visibility of the two escalators, which means architectural changing in the building, and to take out the walls which covers the all the windows in the second floor and which were used to fix shelves full of products.
Another big problems were the irregular floor plan which made the store navigation complexe, the excessive amount of shelves, products and communication, the difficult access to the warehouse (which used to make very busy salespersons let pallets of products as obstacles to the shelves a whole day) and the amount of too visible alarms.
BIG HEAD LONG TAIL
Using the sheet with the net sales for each type of product, I calculated and shown the "big head" and the "long tail". 11 product categories with 36% of the SKUs were responsible for 73% of the net sales.
Those categories should be the most easy to find in the new project. In the contrary of what was suggested by one of the directors - to increase the time that shoppers stay in the store and make them walk more through the store to find what they want - I suggested that by reducing the time to find what they initially intend to buy, the chances to buy other products would be increased. The idea of positioning the big head visible and easy to get was to make the customer time more productive instead of to increase the time spent in the store.
8 of those 11 categories in the "big head" must be positioned in the first floor. As the other three were not possible to fit in the first, they should be positioned in a way that was visible from the main path in the first floor. The "long tail" in turn should be reduced in the new store.
