Retail SWAT Team

The retail sector grappled with an unprecedented labor shortage, exacerbated by a surge in sales driven by pandemic-era spending. The lack of available employees poses a significant risk to retailers, impeding its ability to capitalize on heightened customer demand. As such, Hilco was bound to deliver a quick operational solution to a few retailers.

Hilco responded by deploying a network of seasoned retail supervisors, referred to as the “Retail SWAT Team,” to fortify operations at over 62 stores nationwide. Active from October 8 to December 22, the team’s key responsibilities included merchandise management, unboxing receipts, and preparing the sales floor for customers. The entire initiative was managed using Hilco’s proprietary ReStore for Retail technology platform, ensuring seamless execution.

Ultimately, this strategic maneuver allowed these retailers to meet consumer demand and have a successful 2021/2022 holiday season.

We were tasked with assisting a 72-chain retailer with similar services. Channel Control Merchants found their stores to be in desperate need of our Retail SWAT Team’s specific skill set.

The retailer’s operation team identified 66 of their stores to be in disarray. The sales floors had not been set or recovered in some time; they were crowded with outdated/damaged inventory. Additionally back rooms were stacked with high grossing desirable and relevant seasonal inventory that were rapidly losing their worth. Sign packages needed to be properly implemented. The stores in general needed an operations overhaul, something that their anemic store teams could not handle on their own while still servicing their loyal customer base.

Between May 22nd and June 30th our teams were deployed into the market tackling these major issues, seeing an immediate impact in stores. Our teams with the help of temp labor were able to push out thousands of pallets in a short period, while resetting the sales floors and eliminated the obsolete inventory.  Most stores saw double digit comps. Backrooms were emptied restoring the natural flow of merchandise, eliminating the bottle neck in the DC, and allowing for additional opportunistic buys.

The store teams were elated with the additional support resulting in an upswing in staff moral and retention.

CCM reached out for our assistance. They had experienced some changes in their DC allocations, a continual shortage of instore staff and operational management changes that lead to a portion of their stores having an overabundance of freight in their back rooms and no way of getting it out onto the sale floors.

The retailer’s operation team identified 24 stores in the midsouth region of the US that had 100+ pallets of inventory in their backrooms and room on the sales floors. Their sales floors needed to be rearranged to match the backroom inventory, backrooms needed to be organized for packaways and easy restock and freight needed to be processed.

Between September 20th and October 6th our teams were deployed into the market tackling these major issues. In three short weeks our teams, with the assistance of temp labor that they managed were able to rework sales floors, organize (in most cases completely empty backrooms) backrooms and push all relevant freight onto the sales floors. In total 4,000 pallets and gaylords were processed according to CCM procedures. The sales impact on the stores was immediate, this grouping of stores saw an average of 13% comp increase. With the top store at a 66% comp increase.

The store teams were rather welcoming of the support and the stores are now ready for a strong fourth quarter.