I have seen several job offers for merchandisers. They all also require that you have experiece in such area as reading plan-o-grams. Where is merchandising skills taught and hiring started?

shopaholico

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2012 02:54AM by shopaholico.

First you really should use the edit link in your post and remove your e-mail address. This is a public forum and it could open you up to spam and scams. I've never seen a lot here about merchandising. Volition.com actually has a forum devoted to it and you don't have to actually register to read threads or use the search function.

LisaSTL,

Thanks for the recommendation. Email addressis gone.

shopaholico

I have been doing merchandising for 7 years. Never a dull moment. I will never get make any money...drivng around is expensive, upkeep of a car is expensive, paying taxes is costly too, print lots of info for projects, changes in schedule etc. I would recommend you stay away from Certified. I tried working for them twice and refuse to work for them any longer. They give you jobs then change the schedule... take your jobs away, bonus them and give them to someone else. That is just sooooo wrong. Driveline might be a good place to start.

well basically a recipe is a planogram... or you could do one or two at certified... the dollar stores are pretty easy... or you could just say you have no experience... or just "some"

no schools or classes for this...
castforce.com is good too...

Dear Cooldude581,

Your message stated:

"well basically a recipe is a planogram... or you could do one or two at certified... the dollar stores are pretty easy... or you could just say you have no experience... or just "some"

no schools or classes for this...
castforce.com is good too...
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

First of all, thanks for the replying, but I found your message a little hard to understand for me. I type too fast too.So, if you don't mind, I will repeat back what I think you said.

1) A plan-o-gram is a recipe for building a display (some thing like -
"Slot A" is used with "Tab A" with a map on how to build it.??

2) Try www.dollarstores.com and click on a merchandisers link.

3) Try www.castforce.com and look for merchandisers link.

4) I won't even try to interpret "or you could do one or two at certified..."
I really need some help with that one.
See, I really don't know anything about Merchandising. I basically thought
I would go to a store, audit the product on the shelves, and shelve the
product when it was shipped back to me and maybe show a picture of the
display. If youdon't mind helping me a little more, I sure would appreciate
it.
I do have a "little experience". A Merchandiser would bring product to the
convenience store I worked at on weekends, and I would inventory the locked
boxes sent and shelve the product. But that's all.

Shopaholico in NC

From what little I know about merchandising I can tell you this much

1) you are correct
2) No, their merchandising jobs are through a company who hires independent contractors
3) I'm not sure of the website for Castforce, but that may be right
4) Most likely he was talking about Certified Field Associates. They are a part of Market Force, but Certified deals mostly in merchandising instead of mystery shopping.

There is very little on this forum about merchandising. Volition.com is another independent contractors forum and has a section devoted to merchandising. You do not have to join Volition in order to read or perform searches just when you want to post. Another place to try is www.narms.com. They are an organization devoted to merchandising.

With those sites you ought to be able to do your research and find what you need to know.

If you are going with NARMS be extremely careful... i was burned by a place called Wonder marketing to do a set up in Sams club... and both NARMs and sams club toke no responsibility for the matter... 19 hours and probably 100 miles in gas, supposedly for $300... no go... and they have been messing people over since 2009... with sams and NARMS while of course it is there legal right to take no responsibility i have ZERO respect for either sams or NARMs...

on the rare occasion you are right in your description... but more often than not they consist of mailing the store what is needed (mostly cardboard cutouts and pamphlets) and you go in and set it up... for example with the dollars stores... all the cell phone displays are usually handled by contractors as well as gift card displays... so if you want to have an idea pick a store and look at the gift card/cell phone displays... the most common planograms for certified are movie set ups... every time you go in to a theater and see a cardboard display thats merchandising... probably done by certified... its basically directions of which pieces go where...

a planogram is a picture of what needs to go where most of the time... kind of directions in a lego or model kit...

the two best merchandising are www.certfiedfieldassociates.com and www.castforce.com

if you are looking to start try certified... they wont pay well but you will get experience.. make sure you start out on very easy or easy... as they have a good rating system... but dont trust their estimates on time... as they are more often than not over the cap... especially since you are new...

i havent done anything complicated for castforce yet... in fact some were took a ton less time than anything i did for certified by like 50%+ and the pay was 2xs as much at least... but i had to apply 10+ times for an assignment before i got one... and then i could pick them up at will... but at the same time there is less knowledge about this place... as i have been only working with them for 3 months now and few on this forum have even heard, much less worked for them... and as such i cannot promise it will be easy...

as stated above certified at times will cancel assignments or give misleading information about dates and times... my mom had that experience with them... i cannot speak to them rescheduling but more than one person on here has expressed their frustration about that... but if you read about them you will find that people that experience this are in the minority...

and they pay fast and are quick to tell you if you did anything wrong plus they seem to have a three strike system so one or two blown assignments will not boot you...

I guess NARMS is the MSPA of merchandising right, companies are listed but that is no guarantee? In that case have you found the Volition merchandising forum to be of any use in checking out companies?