The holidays are a hectic time of year for everyone. But for those working in the retail and logistics industries, it is the busiest time. From choosing which Christmas songs to play in the store to choosing the flashiest places to display toys to delivering Amazon packages to your door on time, there are thousands of people who are responsible for making holiday shopping merry become. Here are some of their stories.
Nordstrom starts preparing a year in advance
When shoppers across the country walk into a Nordstrom this week, they’ll be greeted with twinkling lights, garland hung around the store and Mariah Carey singing that all she wants for Christmas is you.
But the planning that goes into creating an experience that puts customers in the holiday spirit begins a year in advance, when department store executives select the overall theme that sets the tone for the facility, said Paige Boggs, vice president of store environment at Nordstrom.
This year’s theme at Nordstrom is “Home for the Holidays,” a nod to nostalgia and the traditions surrounding Christmas. Late last year, the store’s in-house design team and a group of engineers began designing decorations around the theme, including holiday villages and candles in windows. These larger items will be manufactured and delivered to Nordstrom’s 93 stores through August, Ms. Boggs said.
However, the actual decorations in stores don’t begin until the Monday evening before Thanksgiving. Over the next few days, in-store teams are working feverishly to set up 3,500 trees and hang 3,900 garlands, 4,350 wreaths and 95,000 fairy lights – all in preparation for Black Friday. For many retailers like Nordstrom, the day after Thanksgiving is the start of the biggest sales weeks of the year.
And contrary to popular belief, Nordstrom doesn’t scent its stores during the holiday season. “Our goal is odor-free,” Ms. Boggs said. “Scent is a very polarizing thing,” she continued, adding that the store even uses unscented cleaning products.
The day after Thanksgiving, Nordstrom will also begin playing holiday music in its stores. But to avoid driving store employees crazy with an endless loop of “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” the department store has 30,000 songs on rotation. On Black Friday, the retailer will play Christmas music 50 percent of the time before scaling back to 20 percent the next day and slowly increasing back to 50 percent by mid-December. “My goal,” Ms. Boggs said, “is that you don’t hear the same song twice a day.”
Target’s toy section is expanding into Toyland
During the holidays, toys at Target are moved outside of their designated aisle to other parts of the store. The category is big business for the retailer, and while the season’s popular toys are largely already known — hello, Barbie and LEGO — executives are constantly debating how much space they should allocate to toys this time of year. There are ways to “cheat the space,” said Tara Russell, vice president of visual merchandising and styling.
Toys are placed at the ends of the aisles and in the main aisle. A large red container shaped like a train holds small stuffed animals and other knick-knacks to attract shoppers. FAO Schwarz toys are also on display throughout the store.
“I’m sure our toy team could have more space,” Ms. Russell said with a smile. “But they maximize what they have, and then we make sure we chip in and help find a way to give them additional space.”
Sometimes the team unpacks large items like a toy wagon to give parents an idea of how big it is. Children also have the opportunity to play with the objects straight away. But shoppers have told Target they’re not crazy about having too many unpackaged toys. “Our guests tend to not like the distraction as much as maybe they used to,” she said.
Instead, Target executives want customers to feel like they can easily walk through the store while completing their wish lists. Signage plays a role here.
“We know the top 10 toys so we make sure you know where they are,” Ms Russell said. “We want to make it easier for you to find the things that are likely to be on your list, and the top 10 toys are much more likely to be on your list than, say, the 100th toy.”
Amazon drivers become Santa’s helpers
In the week after Black Friday, Kraig Kuban, an Amazon driver, usually has a good sense of what shoppers in and around St. Petersburg, Florida, bought as holiday gifts. He is one of a few hundred drivers at the e-commerce giant trained to bring the heavy items, some weighing up to 300 pounds, to customers’ homes. This is his fifth holiday season doing this work.
He delivers a steady stream of bed-in-the-boxes, Peloton workout machines and equipment throughout the year. He’ll deliver those before Christmas, but he’ll also start loading more Power Wheels cars and kitchen playsets into his truck. Then there are the artificial Christmas trees.
He put the first Christmas tree on his truck before Halloween. There are now at least one or two trees on his truck every day. “We’ve delivered so many of them, and it’s just a little more monotonous,” said Mr. Kuban, 50. “Put it in the truck, let’s deliver it.” (He’s grateful he doesn’t have a real, prickly tree yet had to deliver.)
On average, Mr. Kuban and his partner deliver 15 to 30 packages a day, sometimes setting up the treadmill or air hockey table they drop off. At this time of year, the parents meet him outside his truck and ask him to be discreet as the package is a gift for their child. So he drags the item into the garage to help them put it away.
And although he jokingly refers to himself as “Scrooge” when it comes to his own Christmas shopping, his job and his truck make it impossible to escape Christmas. “The antenna on our trucks is broken, and as soon as we get a little way out of the area, the only radio that comes on is the station that plays Christmas music,” Mr. Kuban said. “So let’s listen to this.”
Macy’s supply chain team is playing a complex game of maneuver
The racks of cozy knit sweaters and shimmering sequin dresses now on display at your local Macy’s arrived at the company’s distribution centers toward the end of the summer. Ensuring these sweaters and all other items stay in stock at Macy’s is part of the complex game of Tetris that Sean Barbour, Macy’s senior vice president of supply chain, and his team are accustomed to.
It is Mr. Barbour’s fourth vacation with the company; In that time, he and his team have weathered the Covid pandemic, global supply chain bottlenecks and last year’s severe winter storms.
“We are great at solving challenges, no matter what form those challenges come in,” he said.
Behind the scenes, the company’s team that oversees its supply chain determines which items – and how many of them – should be in Macy’s more than 560 department stores in 43 states. The same goes for Bloomingdale’s stores owned by Macy’s parent company.
The team spends the weeks leading up to Christmas using sophisticated technology to monitor a variety of real-time metrics that help predict how long it will take for a given product to sell out in a store. The goal is to get more of this merchandise into the store before that happens.
“We are positioning stock and ranges in these regions and stores ahead of the season,” Mr Barbour said. Macy’s maintains product reserves in nearby fulfillment centers so items can be delivered quickly to the stores that need them.
Shipping the same number of items to every store would result in some of those goods wasting away. “We’re not really looking to have a huge amount of Christmas sweaters in Hawaii,” Mr. Barbour said.
Despite the sophisticated modeling, a snowstorm could hit a region and slow delivery times, or an item could unexpectedly fly off the shelves. Mr Barbour’s team needs to be flexible in such situations.
“We will really do whatever it takes,” he said. “We will change delivery schedules. We ship inventory from another location. We will literally do anything to support this store.”
Asked what time he gets up on Black Friday, Mr Barbour said: “That assumes I’ve gone to sleep.”