I am interested in doing this. Will someone please take the time to answer a few questions for me please? First, when someone arrives at a location what does that person do? Do the store employees know that someone is coming? Do we go in the front door or the employee door? Exactly what happens on these things? Thank you for taking the time to answer me.

For merchandising jobs the store does know you are coming. Generally, you would go to customer service first, ask for the vendor log and sign in. Just go in the regular customer door. After you sign in, you can ask customer to page you a manager or go into the store and find the appropriate one yourself. This depends on the store. Once you meet with the manager, you do the assignment, which could be resetting an area to a planogram, putting up signs, bringing product on to the floor, etc. The merchandising company will provide you with detailed instructions, and if there are any questions you can contact them before and possibly during the assignment. Sometimes you will receive signs, stickers or whatnot directly from the merchandising company to bring to the store, You may need more management help to find and fetch stock or signage from the back room. When you are finished, you will probably have to get the signature of the manager, then you sign out of the vendor log and you are done.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2014 03:01AM by kamarkim.

Here's what I have found since 2007 when I started merchandising. Your smaller store managers MAY know you are coming...such as convenient stores that may have a gift card reset. They usually get the supplies at the store and hold them for the merchandiser. The LARGER stores, such as Walmart??? Well, you can FORGET about a manager knowing you are coming!! Once you sign in, your best bet is to head to the particular dept and see if there is a dept manager around. If not, at least in the Walmarts, you can go to the dressing room area and have one paged for you there. I have had jobs in Walmart where I had to call ahead of time and let them know what I would be coming for....the particular manager and I would get it all set up, and then on the day of the job, when I went in, that particular manager would not be working, and the person in his/her place would have NO IDEA of what I was there for!!

If the job is simple, such as placing instant coupons on product, or hang tags with samples, and there is no one around, I just start doing my job and when I see someone, I let them know what I am doing. That has worked for me in the larger stores. But I HAVE had cosmetic resets with a Team, and had made prior phone calls about where the pallets would be, etc. And on the day of the previously scheduled job, found the manager not there, and the person in charge had NO IDEA of where the pallet I needed would be, as it was not placed where I was told it would be placed! Then you waste an hour or so trying to find it all!!

Usually merchandisers just go in the front door like the customers do.

guysmom is so right! I actually go in ahead of time to set up a mutually agreeable date for the project, and explain what I will be doing, ask them to print my labels, and see if they really have received the product / shipper. That way, on the day they have agreed to have me do the work, I can explain it all again to the person who IS working that day, who knows absolutely nothing about what I'm there for, and then wait for the labels to be printed. I'm 3 for 3 this week on this scenario. I love doing things twice. NOT. I only accept reset work that is close to home, so it is easy for me to go in ahead of time when I'm out and about. I'm a solo merchandiser, so I make sure the product is there before I waste a day.
For couponing , they send the POP to my house then I just go in, tell the service desk what I'm there for when I sign in, let them know I will be taking a picture of the finished section with the coupons, and that I will need a manager's signature when I am done.
I actually had a project a few weeks ago, in which I had to go into stores to make sure that a Save the Rain Forest group had not placed warning stickers on the front of shampoo bottles. The sticker said " If you buy this product you are destroying the Rain Forest." If they were there, I had to take a picture of the coupons on the bottles, pull the coupons off, and then take a picture of the cleaned up section.
They were very nicely printed, not an amateur job at all.
Merchandising can be an interesting job, sometimes. A horror story other times. Rats in the cake mix aisle comes to mind.

True. I shall modify my statement to - sometimes stores are expecting someone to come and do this particular merchandising assignment, but they don't know it's you in particular or when you are coming. Always Walmart does not know you are coming and hardly ever do they know about the job you are going to do.

There are different types of merchandising jobs. There is project work, coverage or continuity work and resets. For project work no one ever knows I will be there or what I will be doing. The coverage work, I am there on a regular basis but they do not know what I am going to be doing on a particular day. For resets some times the store will know the reset is to be done but they don't always know what company is doing it.
For example, this morning I had a cosmetic reset. The store knew when it dropped into their system to be done. I talked to them ahead of time let them know what day and time I would be in and requested that the POG, tags, fixtures and product be ready. Was it ready, NO......because the dept mgr was on vacation.

I always enter the store the same way the customers do. Most stores have a vendor book that you sign into. If it is a small store I talk to the manager on duty to let them know what I am doing. In a larger store I go directly to the dept I am working in and let the dept mgr know what is going on. In the larger stores the management (in many cases) do not want to be "bothered" by vendors.

How do I find a list of Merchandising companies ? I am currently shopping and would like to try this also.

You could try Indeed, Monster, or a Google search for merchandising jobs with your city. NARMS is changing over to a new site, so it is kind of hard to find things anymore. I tried this morning and couldn't bring up the list.

This is another site I found. Use your own good judgment before you sign up with anyone.

[walletboosters.com]

Thanks