Kirsten



Hi I'm Kirsten. I currently live in Palmerston North in NZ.

I have a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing Management and a Diploma in Computer Graphic Design, well, most of the degree really if I ever go back to finish a couple of papers!! Ha Ha.

I love anything involving water and until I embarked on study at Otago Uni, I was a competitive tenpin bowler who was ranked quite well amongst my peers - I might add. Now that I have a career and can afford it, I have started it up again.

I'm a big of a geek really - interested in all things design, art and gadget related. But in saying that, I think I'm a pretty cool geek.

My favourite Warehouse product would have to be the Harrison and Lane range. I love them, good solid products that not only look great, but last too.

So come on, read my blog. Find out what life at The Warehouse for a Store Manager Development Programme participant is really like. Learn about my challenges as well as the awesome friendships and opportunities I get along the way.

Ask me questions, I'm not shy.
August 3

Never a dull moment in retail!

I would have to say, that the most common theme throughout my blog has been the fact that I am busy. This past 6 weeks have been no exception In fact, it has been one of the busiest periods I’ve had.

My Store Manager took annual leave for 2 weeks, followed by being out of store for meetings - so effectively 3 weeks. This meant one thing for me… Control of the store!

As I have developed in my curent role, I’ve been looking at things a lot differently.  I’ve learnt to conduct myself with more urgency and have more accountability. In the time my SM was away from the store, we held a spring garden presentation in store.  Two buyers visited and presented to a range of people from the region. We had an operations meeting in Wellington to learn about upcoming labour changes for the new financial year, and we had TOY SALE! Toy Sale is our mid year event and it is pretty massive as anyone who has shopped in the first few days would know. This year our store really got into the theme of it and dressed up our store with balloons… BALLOONS EVERYWHERE! It was pretty fun inflating them and putting them up all over the place and then the team dressing up over a couple of days along with face painting and balloon animals. It was a great atmosphere and to see the result of our sales in the first week was such an achievement considering the amount of planning and work that went into it from all of us involved.

Through all of this I had to ensure we maintained recovery standards and that all compliance and promotions were being maintained and implemented. I was even able to learn more about labour as we had to ensure our spending was in line with budgets.  We have also reset our stockroom with some brand new racking and done a major clean up which is absolutely fantastic as it offers a lot more transparecny to what is happening in the stockroom.

We’ve been getting great feedback from customers about how the store is looking and it really is looking great. It feels pretty good to know that we are making a great difference in our store and it is starting to show in results. Our store not only jumped 12 places in the rankings for all stores, but for our region we won the ‘Store of the Quarter’ cup which is an awesome achievement… the first of many I hope!

In two days time we have our annual conference for the region so I’m really looking forward to catching up with people I’ve worked with previously and having a few wines on Saturday night.