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December 20, 2024
Retail Clutter Is on the Rise: Who’s To Blame?
With all of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season driving talk of strong sales numbers and a healthy retail sector, some of the problems facing the industry tend to fall by the wayside. Chief among these: the ever-increasing amount of clutter found littering store aisles, as Business Insider recently detailed.
Reports of Retail Clutter Go Viral
At least two notable instances of extreme clutter clogging up the aisles at major retailers have emerged in recent months.
According to a November KXLY report, a JOANN craft store in Spokane, Washington, was the scene of a significant mess when a sea of unpacked boxes dominated aisles and storerooms alike. Shoppers described the scene as hectic, with barely enough room to navigate a cart throughout the floor space. Employees explained that they just didn’t have the time to unload and organize all the merchandise.
“I think five times a day I’m answering the same question about the boxes. Corporate doesn’t want to give us hours, so we can’t take the time to actually get stuff out,” store manager Peggy Sue said of the situation at the time.
Calling for corporate to allow the store to close for a day to sort out the inventory, she continued, “I’m at a point where I am tired of seeing my coworkers crying and working themselves to the point where they are physically sick and tired.” The situation escalated to the point where the fire marshall was called to make sure that the boxes didn’t “pose a threat to customers.”
Additionally, in September, per The Daily Dot, Target found itself in the crosshairs on social media after a video profiling an extremely disorganized and untidy store went viral. U-boats, pallets, and boxes were strewn across aisles, mostly brimming with unopened products.
“As a former Target employee, this really hurts my heart seeing a store look like this,” video creator Charles Frank said as the camera caught several instances of extreme disorganization. “The fact that Target’s OK with letting their stores look like this instead of just staffing their stores … [is] upsetting.”
The video racked up over 1.3 million views as of Dec. 20, and commenters were extremely critical of the store’s condition.
“Charles, you really need to start thinking more about the needs of investors and the board members! If Target hires more people, then how will the executives keep their quarterly bonuses!” one user sarcastically quipped.
@thecharlesfrank Oh @target 🥲 #target #targetaudience #shopping #sad #dobetter #fyp #foryou ♬ original sound – TheCharlesFrank
The Retail Clutter Epidemic Is Spreading, But Why?
As Business Insider pointed out, clutter by way of excessive boxes or other disarray was typically constrained to discount and dollar store shopping experiences, but it has since expanded scope to include many other major retailers outside of this segment.
While dollar stores typically work with fewer staff members — and thus, less labor is available to receive inventory and conduct merchandising — this business model seems to have caught favor with mainstream retailers. Understaffing is frequently cited as one primary cause driving the retail clutter problem.
Cost-cutting in terms of labor is also detrimental to operations more broadly, but investors may not immediately see the negative impact of these measures. Neil Saunders, RetailWire BrainTrust member and managing director for GlobalData Retail, weighed in on this score.
“It can be tempting for retailers to cut labor costs in order to juice profit. However, the problem with cutting front-line staff is that it often has a negative impact on the customer experience which, in turn, ultimately compresses sales. So the cuts end up being a false economy,” Saunders wrote in an email to RetailWire.
“In response to declining sales, the reaction is to cut labor some more. This is when you get a vicious circle of decline that can be hard to break out of,” he added.
A second issue, as Business Insider reported, was a simple lack of space. Storage rooms take away from valuable sales floor space, and the vast majority of product needs to be shown to customers in order to sell. Logically, it makes sense for retailers to focus on making every inch of floor space count when it comes to merchandising. However, a balancing act needs to take place between visual appeal, breathing room for customers and staff, and showing as much product as possible. Some retailers do this well, and others, like those mentioned above, struggle.
Finally, as Saunders pointed out, management expertise can sometimes make the best out of a bad situation.
“There will be some store managers that have very strong operating disciplines, and they will not allow things to get out of control,” Saunders said. “And there will be some store managers that are much more lax.”
Discussion Questions
Is retail clutter detrimental enough to the customer experience to significantly impact sales, or will it be accepted as part of a “new normal” shopping experience?
Besides understaffing, what are some other underlying causes contributing to the problem of retail clutter?
What can staff do, at both the store level and at the executive level, to reduce the amount of clutter on the sales floor?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Georganne Bender
Principal, KIZER & BENDER Speaking
Frank Margolis
Executive Director, Growth Marketing & Business Development, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
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While the cutting of store hours is an unfortunate result of the short-term focus on profitability (one that most retailers are guilty of), excess inventory on the floor is usually a byproduct of poor operations – when are the associates scheduled and when is the inventory arriving to the store? If these 2 variables are properly aligned, the situation can be greatly minimized.
Retailers: have your trucks arrive between 3-5PM, unloaded and sorted by 8PM, and have your overnight staff stock the shelves accordingly. Customers shouldn’t be subjected to in-aisle stocking during the busiest parts of the shopping day.
Uhmm: clean things up. NEXT
I understand cost cutting and being short staffed because I have been there, but when I ran stores they never looked like some of the chains I have visited lately. And even if they did after a big sale they didn’t stay that way very long.
I have visited Macy’s, Target, and Kohl’s stores where clothing was knee deep in the fitting rooms, garments were tangled on tables that were piled high and unshoppable. I have seen empty fixtures stacked on sales floors, and product adjacencies that made no sense.
A store is the largest marketing piece a retailer has and when it is out of control so is the brand. The powers that be who run these big chains should put a pin in trying to implement this week’s hot tech and clean up their stores. That’s an unpopular opinion, but neither employees or customers deserve to work/shop in a space that’s out of control.
Yes, clutter and poor standards on the shop floor have a detrimental impact on sales. So cutting labor hours and staff is something of a false economy. The problem is that cutting costs has an immediate impact and tangible on the bottom line, whereas the negative impact on the top line is slower and less visible.
Neil, I consider you the world’s leading expert on retail clutter. 😉
Sadly, it is true! Haha!
One of the first rules of merchandising is maintaining a clean store. Customers can’t shop, retailers can’t operate. Matter of fact, there is a key impact number related to having a messy store versus a clean one and what that translates into is in the double digits for revenue, turnover, and store growth. For Target, their entire reputation is built on having a higher end store and being able to cater to customers who have the expectations just below luxury shopping.
The cause- Sometimes this is due to lax standards, unenforced rules, and of course lack of staff. Sometimes it’s poor planning and allocation issues. Sometimes it’s overburdened space and growth. But sometimes it’s poor planning from a holistic retail perspective -combining different operational segments such as supply chain and logistics. The most insidious is attempting to drive full loads on their trucks rather than LTL just to save transport costs at the expense of capacity in store. Whatever the reason, retailers have to clean up their act or risk losing customers.
Store clutter and unkempt inventory reveals a critical gap in modern supply chain technology adoption. More advanced retailers are displaying AI-powered demand forecasting and inventory optimization systems to prevent the overwhelming backlog of merchandise we’re seeing in stores. Manual processes will always be a struggle but the ability to appropriately anticipate volume and better align shipments with labor will become a core competency in the future. Beyond AI-tech, established smart shelf technology coupled with RFID-enabled inventory management systems are proven sciences that could also be a partial solution to the problems noted in this article.
No, clutter is not the new normal. Retailers need to realize what a conversion killer it is. While some store teams may be unmotivated, I believe the bigger issue is cutting labor hours and/or over-burdening frontline teams with too many tasks. I’d add poor compliance standards in the mix also. Clutter and disarrayed merchandise is a self-inflicted barrier to buying. The retailer spent good money on advertising and promotions to drive shoppers into the store, only to present them with a mess. Not only is this an immediate lost sale, but some of these shoppers will leave scathing reviews on social media which may discourage other shoppers from visiting. In response to lower sales, some retailers will turn up the marketing to drive more shoppers into the stores.
There is a lot of clutter inside the stores, especially aisle after aisle of inventory- cartons, cases, and boxes, both opened and unopened, and even certain tools left on top of boxes, because the stores are understaffed.
I’ve spoken with retailers who couldn’t even add staff for this holiday season, which made this situation much worse after Thanksgiving. Add “insult to injury,” when boxes are stacked next to, or in front of empty shelves. Consumers become angry because the store probably has the items they want to buy, but those items are probably in boxes, not yet on the shelves. Consumers immediately check with Amazon while standing in the aisle.
As the economy suffers from federal mismanagement, coupled with high interest rates, 90% more theft in recent years, and new minimum salary requirements that don’t fit the business model, staffing suffers the most.
Although price increases might pay for more employees, prices are already too high, which is an economic issue, not a retailer’s fault.
Despite what wages are now, I believe if stores were cleaner, and inventory was on the shelves, business would not be lost, customers would be less displeased, and some of the gap might be made up.
Therefore, I believe that retailers should consider increasing their in-store staff at least enough to offset the loss caused by clutter and empty shelves.
It’s funny and ironic. Retailers said they were going to hire up for the holidays, and I guess this didn’t really happen. Cutting staff or not having enough staff can improve the bottom line temporarily, but the ability to not be able to stock product, and the the ability not to be able to recover several times a day, becomes a red flag for customers. No one wants that.
Always have to put your agenda in comments
It’s a simple question: What do you want your customer to experience? Work backward from there. If it’s okay for “clutter” (boxes, unpacked inventory, etc.) to be in the aisles, then don’t worry about hiring enough staff to manage it. But if that’s not normal, provide the story the hours needed to clean up the clutter.
Aside from stores being impacted from the realities of trimmed or limited labor hours, clutter on the retail floor is often driven from communication and coordination breakdowns between merchandising/buyers and operations leadership. It happens when stores aren’t being visited as much by leadership, or store directors aren’t given ample input or the ability to voice concerns.
Retail leadership: get engaged by going to stores frequently, ask questions, visually inspect, and make sure your teams have a say in the operations of your company.
Retail clutter is the result of an old operational model. If retailers are looking to maximize inventory on the selling floor, they need to stagger their deliveries (daily preferred for high volume) and schedule labor shifts to address early am set ups and staging areas. The selling floor should be for sales, not stock or replenishment. If this becomes the new norm, retailers should address their fixturing and floor merchandising to accommodate understock for easy accessibility and restocking. Assigning floor stock only staff and allocating pre-opening floor clean up hours should also be incorporated to operational plans. Of course, efficient management needs to have labor hours dedicated to execute–yes, this adds to overhead, but the alternative can inhibit shopping and deter sales.
Clutter can be reduced many ways, one of which is controlling the amount of inventory sent to locations. “Stuff” in boxes can’t be sold so the problem only snowballs as more deliveries arrive to bury unpacked deliveries. While cost cutting is happening with store hours, it is also happening with delivery options so the ability to control timing of deliveries is impacted as well. Invest inventory to meet space constraints and demand, decrease the weeks of inventory of products, and towers of boxes in aisles won’t need to exist. Plan, plan, plan.
As I have repeated multiple times…labor is not an expense. It is an asset. Just because it is a separate line on a P&L statement doesn’t mean it doesn’t generate business as any other asset.
Retail clutter is becoming a real challenge that retailers can’t afford to ignore. Disorganized aisles and blocked pathways not only frustrate shoppers but can also create safety risks. Cutting back on labor to save money might seem like a quick fix, but it can lead to messy stores, unhappy customers, and ultimately lost sales. Instead, retailers need to focus on having enough staff and better inventory management systems to keep stores organized and inviting.
Retail clutter is absolutely bad for business. It just shows that retailers don’t care and no one would want to shop in a messy store. Understaffing is certainly an issue here, but so is poor leadership and overloading stores with more inventory than they can handle.
At the store level, staff need clear priorities and better tools to manage stock. Meanwhile, executives must avoid chasing short-term savings and focus on hiring and training enough people. Clutter is not the “new normal”; it shouldn’t be, it’s a symptom of bad leadership.
Fix the root causes, or expect customers to keep walking out for good this time.