They asked for the till file we already send to the accountant. The first plates showed the dairy bay earning less than the dried goods we had pushed to the back wall. I did not enjoy being told the yoghurt promotion had been a waste, but the next Monday we moved the facings and the week looked different.
Notes from shops we have sat with
What shops said after the plates were on the table
These notes come from shops that sat with a briefing, a mix review, or a floor walk. They name the piece of work and the sticking point, not a score out of five. One of them records a delay we caused by refusing to fill a missing week.
The seasonal assessment arrived later than I wanted — they waited for a missing week in last August’s extract rather than guessing. That delay annoyed me. The plates themselves stopped us repeating an order of jackets that had sat through two winters.
Giorgi spent the first hour arguing with our SKU names. Fasteners had three spellings. Once that was settled, the plates were plain enough that my nephew, who runs Saturday, could read them without me.
The like-for-like plate for Saburtalo against Didube was the first time we stopped averaging the three shops into one cheerful number. Didube was carrying dead stock we had blamed on the supplier.
The chart session was quieter than our usual supplier morning. We marked four lines to cut before the rep sat down. I still had to defend one of those cuts to the owner, which is my job, not theirs.
A grocery week that would not match the floor
A Vake grocer sent eight clean weeks and still could not see why bread figures jumped while the bakery bay looked empty at four o’clock. The floor walk pairing found the morning bake recorded at the till and the afternoon bake sold as a handwritten tab that never reached the extract. The next briefing used a second column for those tabs. The jump was not demand; it was a hole in the file.
Apparel rooms before the New Year order
Two rooms near Freedom Square asked for a seasonal assessment in October. Last December’s extract showed scarves moving and a padded jacket family sitting after the second markdown. The owner still wanted the jackets. We drew the plate; we did not refuse the order. In January they asked for a weekly briefing. The jackets were in the dead-stock column they now look at first.