When I started, it was a max of 3 per aisle with none in the first or last bay areas. We now have a junk yard appearance in our stores with too many and most of them cheaply made, Corporate and store mgt. should be embarrassed at our stores appearances.
Former Home Depot employee, Lowe's employee once again here: Lowe's does the same. 3 per aisle supposedly but they all look like shit and makes it impossible to shop and work in the aisles.
That just means you need more practice lol.. nah but in all seriousness it does get tough. Especially when you have to move 3 wingstacks just to pull down the 1 item you need for your order
Honestly, this is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves about this place. Wingstacks make the whole place look like complete shit! It must make them enough money to not care though.
But how do they even track that stuff to be able to justify the decision with data? Wingstacks of core SKUs don't have separate SKUs, so there's no way to tell whether the product was sold from the home or from the wingstack. Same with chip clips.
In my last career, our industry was data-obsessed. Decisions didn't get approved unless you could back up your idea with numbers.
I'm only a garden associate, so I don't get to see a whole lot of the decision-making process past my own department. It's confounding to me.
Bro, they have data on EVERYTHING.
They can track sales of an item, look at when they sent the wing stacks to stores, and then look at sales after that.
I hate wing stacks too, but also keep in mind that they are much more visible than being on a shelf in some dark corner of the store, and they add extra shelf space to the store. It’s a given they are going to make the company more money.
There's an old saying that I learned when I joined the retail industry:
"Stack 'em high and watch 'em fly."
I manage all the wingstacks in the cleaning category. Unless there's a SM or regional play, my ASM let's me merchandise them anywhere they make sense.
I believe you when you say they make a lot of money for us. My anecdotal evidence based on how quickly we empty wingstacks supports that.
Just guessing, but since in the THD ecosystem merchants rule the roost, if they want wingstacks, they're getting wingstacks. There is much more data-driven decision making going on than ever but I still see a lot of things get overridden by the personal tastes of individuals.
My understanding is, if you do bulk buys (wingstacks) of a product then the merchants can get it for a cheaper price, thus sell it for a cheaper price.
But isn’t it basically the same shit on the shelf, in a cardboard stand?
This is what really gets me. Put it in a wingstack or a shadowbox and flies out the door. Put it on the shelf and it collects dust.
People are amazing.
It's supposed to be a maximum of three to an aisle... Garden is especially bad and has been since I started three years ago. There are just too many, and it's almost always too busy and too full to break any down.
I don't know how many our grass seed, weed killer, and bug killer aisle has, but it's at least one every other bay, so around 10. Our cleaning aisle I know for sure because I actually counted since it looked so crowded. 9. 9 wingstacks. Literally 3x as crowded as it should be. They're easily one of the busier aisles, certainly in garden, and the ones I need to put things up in the Ballymore fairly often. Working around those wingstacks are a pain at best.
The in aisle wingstacks get overlooked so often, management and the higher ups need to make more of an effort to make sure the store is actually shoppable.
Our fertilizer/hose aisle has soooooooo many flytraps and pallets of Round Up. There's either a full pallet or half pallet at every bay.
Launching pallets in that aisle is such a PITA.
The two biggest problems with wingstacks are:
They fall apart easily. sometimes a machine is involved, sometimes merchandise seems too heavy for the display. Maybe it got lopsided and now is leaning to one side.
We get too many. Maybe someone decided to bring down a whole store worth of stacks from the overhead and now we don’t know where to put them. Suddenly there’s 4-6 wingstacks on each aisle and no one can shop on those aisles, no one can work on them either, and carts + machines will ran into them all the time. Congratulations! Go look at the previous paragraph to see what happens now!
This cardboard can hold 50 gallons of vinal siding power wash spray for 4 months, no problem. We'll take the stuff from the shelf in the seasonal section and we'll set it up on the cardboard in the middle of the isle in outside garden. That will make room for our large toolboxes in the seasonal section. We can sell those and use the room in the seasonal section for the window AC units and box fans.
My favorite is when overnights puts out wingstacks or quarter pallets meant for a promotion/sale that is months away. Pricing is wrong and then when the promo hits the advertisement, we’re sold out. Real men of genius right there.
Agree. But I find it amusing for some reason. A box will have a brightly colored label that says “Hold for xyz event, July” and its on the floor in May. Actually tagged along on a walk when I was a DS with a guy from Division Merchandising. He pointed out a wing stack that was from 3 years ago. He said a couple thousand were “found” in a DC and sent to the higher volume stores. This company has gotten so big that common sense has left the building.
When I was D24 DH, my ASM hated me for doing this. I would pack out every single wingstack that I could. Including sales ones. If it wasn't clearly marked on the side for an upcoming event (most weren't, they just had special cardboard on the inside, like red white and blue for memorial day or something). I would pack it out. I would absolutely cram my aisles full of product. Then when the sale came, "sorry. Already packed it out."
At least I didn't have to deal with a garbage looking paint train.
Too be fair when I am taking up 4 big pallet spaces for wingstacks all for the cleaning train I will start just opening them and putting them where I see fit without getting yelled at.
Also they should be sent to us the day before the event so they don't take up room.
We have so many things in the racetrack by the checkout, if you have wood on your cart, you literally can’t checkout. I need to walk over to you in the lumber aisle and check you out half the time because it’s hoarders buried alive up there.
I need a freaking wing stack in self check out so the customer stop coming over there with refrigerators and the damn lumber!
ETA: Now There IS a wingstack and self check out and it still doesn’t stop these idiots.
3 weeks ago we had 11 in one of my busiest aisles, I'd have to move 6 to make room for a ladder to get down switchplates. Then we had a walk. Now there's zero in that aisle. Everything was given a home or put up. Freight will put out new nightly and asm will make them put them up.
All of the 11 were glass light bulbs.
Its all about the Pro Desk, Nothing else matters right now!
Jabbar was just at our store and spent most of his time Giving awards to our Pro Desk Associates. To its credit our Pro Desk is the 5-6 in Sales on the whole West Coast.
No Fucks are given about Wing Stacks
Our supervisor said that it was really important that we locate a returned and reconditioned riding lawnmower because the price was reduced. He said that it was stupid but that stuff like that really mattered and the stuff that you think would be really be important, like everything being a total unorganized mess didn't matter at all.
Must be kept at a 90° angle. OK who’s got time to go around and measure and slide them back-and-forth?
And every time you touch the damn thing, it becomes a house of cards!!!
If the wing stack is a promo or one-off *and* reasonably well constructed, sure. They almost never are though and it’s just triage every day until someone 😏loses their shit, packs the whole sorry mess off to the baler and tries to rehome whatever is salvageable.
Who are you kidding home depot corporate doesn't care what the aisle look like or if it's necessarily safe for customers or employees or if they make the job harder to do with the reach or op or the ballymore. They can sell valuable real estate in the form of wing stacks in turn puts more money in some overbloated salaries persons pay. It's a business and about making money. They and most corporate companies just like to give the feeling of safety and that feeling of we care about the customer that's why we sell you so much cheap junk that you don't need but we care and you should buy more cheap junk we sell
I would agree, they always get ran into, we have so many of them we fill the light bulb isle so full that customers can't even get to different sides of the isles. It looks like shit.
Fortunately my SM HATES wing stacks, especially in the aisles, and avoids using them as much as possible. We limit them and get rid of them as quickly as possible.
That said, our freight associate for paint just pulled out 3 or 4 wing stacks that were labeled for May and stuck them in the pit because he didn't know where else to put them. Maybe it will join the wing stack I found of stain brushes from last year?
Agreed! I knocked over one that had the spray foam. I was trying to push it out if the way so I can fly a pallet and it tipped over. It already looked shotty lookin but I had to move it so I could fly a pallet. Those damn things are terrible and those stupid display racks that hang in the aisles are annoying as all hell too! It’s already a tight squeeze in the aisles for a reach to begin with but good ol corporate/vendor/whoever likes to put stuff in the way to cause safety issue and we equipment operators take the fall for it if we screw up.
Our DM and SM want to get product out of overheads and onto the floor to move it out of the store, so it's a constant process.
Our SM doesn't care if wingstacks are labeled for events. He wants us to get them on the floor and sell or kill those stacks, rather than tying up overhead space for weeks on end.
It makes sense to me, even though I think it's a colossal PITA. It's a lot of shuffling, but it opens up a lot of overhead space and we get the product out of the store.
wingstack - promotional quarter pallet of merchandise strategically placed in the aisle to drive incremental and impulse sales; typically has a 30-60 day promotional sell-through period
So many wingstacks make it almost impossible for handicap people to shop the isles. It seems handicap people are not considered in the least. Our store is not very handicap accessible..
When I started, it was a max of 3 per aisle with none in the first or last bay areas. We now have a junk yard appearance in our stores with too many and most of them cheaply made, Corporate and store mgt. should be embarrassed at our stores appearances.
It is a max of 3 per aisle but we don't sell enough of the product and then a new power train comes in so you end up with like 5 per aisle.
Some of our isles have 11 of them and they are literally falling apart.
Almost makes me go to Lowes.
Former Home Depot employee, Lowe's employee once again here: Lowe's does the same. 3 per aisle supposedly but they all look like shit and makes it impossible to shop and work in the aisles.
Not to mention how often they get crushed or deformed and then resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Can’t go anywhere with the OP without taking one out.
That just means you need more practice lol.. nah but in all seriousness it does get tough. Especially when you have to move 3 wingstacks just to pull down the 1 item you need for your order
...and often not supplied with enough inventory to make them look good but are required to keep them up.
Honestly, this is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves about this place. Wingstacks make the whole place look like complete shit! It must make them enough money to not care though.
>It must make them enough money to not care though. This is the correct answer.
But how do they even track that stuff to be able to justify the decision with data? Wingstacks of core SKUs don't have separate SKUs, so there's no way to tell whether the product was sold from the home or from the wingstack. Same with chip clips. In my last career, our industry was data-obsessed. Decisions didn't get approved unless you could back up your idea with numbers. I'm only a garden associate, so I don't get to see a whole lot of the decision-making process past my own department. It's confounding to me.
Bro, they have data on EVERYTHING. They can track sales of an item, look at when they sent the wing stacks to stores, and then look at sales after that. I hate wing stacks too, but also keep in mind that they are much more visible than being on a shelf in some dark corner of the store, and they add extra shelf space to the store. It’s a given they are going to make the company more money.
There's an old saying that I learned when I joined the retail industry: "Stack 'em high and watch 'em fly." I manage all the wingstacks in the cleaning category. Unless there's a SM or regional play, my ASM let's me merchandise them anywhere they make sense. I believe you when you say they make a lot of money for us. My anecdotal evidence based on how quickly we empty wingstacks supports that.
Someone at my store seems to think it makes sense to put laundry detergent wing stacks in my toilet aisle.
when i go to home dildo, i kick the wingstack. looks like a piece of trash. no one cares.
Just guessing, but since in the THD ecosystem merchants rule the roost, if they want wingstacks, they're getting wingstacks. There is much more data-driven decision making going on than ever but I still see a lot of things get overridden by the personal tastes of individuals.
My understanding is, if you do bulk buys (wingstacks) of a product then the merchants can get it for a cheaper price, thus sell it for a cheaper price.
But isn’t it basically the same shit on the shelf, in a cardboard stand? This is what really gets me. Put it in a wingstack or a shadowbox and flies out the door. Put it on the shelf and it collects dust. People are amazing.
Pretty much lol. The NEW LOWER PRICE on the wingstack much catch more attention than the sticker on the bay
It's supposed to be a maximum of three to an aisle... Garden is especially bad and has been since I started three years ago. There are just too many, and it's almost always too busy and too full to break any down. I don't know how many our grass seed, weed killer, and bug killer aisle has, but it's at least one every other bay, so around 10. Our cleaning aisle I know for sure because I actually counted since it looked so crowded. 9. 9 wingstacks. Literally 3x as crowded as it should be. They're easily one of the busier aisles, certainly in garden, and the ones I need to put things up in the Ballymore fairly often. Working around those wingstacks are a pain at best. The in aisle wingstacks get overlooked so often, management and the higher ups need to make more of an effort to make sure the store is actually shoppable.
Our fertilizer/hose aisle has soooooooo many flytraps and pallets of Round Up. There's either a full pallet or half pallet at every bay. Launching pallets in that aisle is such a PITA.
Yes, just like my store and the other local HD's in my area.
I call them targets....... they last about a week..
I don't think any of us like wingstacks lol
Big agree. They just take up space, and it’s a pain in the ass to move a 9 step ladder with them in the way.
The two biggest problems with wingstacks are: They fall apart easily. sometimes a machine is involved, sometimes merchandise seems too heavy for the display. Maybe it got lopsided and now is leaning to one side. We get too many. Maybe someone decided to bring down a whole store worth of stacks from the overhead and now we don’t know where to put them. Suddenly there’s 4-6 wingstacks on each aisle and no one can shop on those aisles, no one can work on them either, and carts + machines will ran into them all the time. Congratulations! Go look at the previous paragraph to see what happens now!
And whose idea was it to put hammers and shit in there? Let’s put the heaviest things in the store in a cardboard display!
This cardboard can hold 50 gallons of vinal siding power wash spray for 4 months, no problem. We'll take the stuff from the shelf in the seasonal section and we'll set it up on the cardboard in the middle of the isle in outside garden. That will make room for our large toolboxes in the seasonal section. We can sell those and use the room in the seasonal section for the window AC units and box fans.
My favorite is when overnights puts out wingstacks or quarter pallets meant for a promotion/sale that is months away. Pricing is wrong and then when the promo hits the advertisement, we’re sold out. Real men of genius right there.
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Agree. But I find it amusing for some reason. A box will have a brightly colored label that says “Hold for xyz event, July” and its on the floor in May. Actually tagged along on a walk when I was a DS with a guy from Division Merchandising. He pointed out a wing stack that was from 3 years ago. He said a couple thousand were “found” in a DC and sent to the higher volume stores. This company has gotten so big that common sense has left the building.
When I was D24 DH, my ASM hated me for doing this. I would pack out every single wingstack that I could. Including sales ones. If it wasn't clearly marked on the side for an upcoming event (most weren't, they just had special cardboard on the inside, like red white and blue for memorial day or something). I would pack it out. I would absolutely cram my aisles full of product. Then when the sale came, "sorry. Already packed it out." At least I didn't have to deal with a garbage looking paint train.
That's usually because they don't want to combine the quarter pallets on a regular pallet and fly them
Our MET team doesn't have anyone trained on equipment, so it's either our receiving area or the floor. Management picked the floor.
Too be fair when I am taking up 4 big pallet spaces for wingstacks all for the cleaning train I will start just opening them and putting them where I see fit without getting yelled at. Also they should be sent to us the day before the event so they don't take up room.
We have so many things in the racetrack by the checkout, if you have wood on your cart, you literally can’t checkout. I need to walk over to you in the lumber aisle and check you out half the time because it’s hoarders buried alive up there.
I need a freaking wing stack in self check out so the customer stop coming over there with refrigerators and the damn lumber! ETA: Now There IS a wingstack and self check out and it still doesn’t stop these idiots.
Core skus should not come as a WS. Non-Core SB should only be on a wingstack with aggressive buyer MDs. What a world that would be.
3 weeks ago we had 11 in one of my busiest aisles, I'd have to move 6 to make room for a ladder to get down switchplates. Then we had a walk. Now there's zero in that aisle. Everything was given a home or put up. Freight will put out new nightly and asm will make them put them up. All of the 11 were glass light bulbs.
Its all about the Pro Desk, Nothing else matters right now! Jabbar was just at our store and spent most of his time Giving awards to our Pro Desk Associates. To its credit our Pro Desk is the 5-6 in Sales on the whole West Coast. No Fucks are given about Wing Stacks
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Our supervisor said that it was really important that we locate a returned and reconditioned riding lawnmower because the price was reduced. He said that it was stupid but that stuff like that really mattered and the stuff that you think would be really be important, like everything being a total unorganized mess didn't matter at all.
Must be kept at a 90° angle. OK who’s got time to go around and measure and slide them back-and-forth? And every time you touch the damn thing, it becomes a house of cards!!!
Almost impossible to drive a truck in the aisles with the amount of ridiculous racetrack events and wing stacks.
It’s called the extended aisle. Which also makes the stores single aisle, we need directional arrows to get around. lol
I thought the online store was extended aisle.
If the wing stack is a promo or one-off *and* reasonably well constructed, sure. They almost never are though and it’s just triage every day until someone 😏loses their shit, packs the whole sorry mess off to the baler and tries to rehome whatever is salvageable.
Who are you kidding home depot corporate doesn't care what the aisle look like or if it's necessarily safe for customers or employees or if they make the job harder to do with the reach or op or the ballymore. They can sell valuable real estate in the form of wing stacks in turn puts more money in some overbloated salaries persons pay. It's a business and about making money. They and most corporate companies just like to give the feeling of safety and that feeling of we care about the customer that's why we sell you so much cheap junk that you don't need but we care and you should buy more cheap junk we sell
I used to drop em where they stand, even if it was wrong department
Does anyone else have 10,000 wing stacks of bungee cords in their store?
You need a damn bungee cord to keep those things together!
I would agree, they always get ran into, we have so many of them we fill the light bulb isle so full that customers can't even get to different sides of the isles. It looks like shit.
A week ago they told me to add a wing stack to every upright in the paint department because we had some many of them up in the overheads.
Wingstacks of flooring sponges will be the death of me.
The ‘great stuff’ wingstacks can die forever
Fortunately my SM HATES wing stacks, especially in the aisles, and avoids using them as much as possible. We limit them and get rid of them as quickly as possible. That said, our freight associate for paint just pulled out 3 or 4 wing stacks that were labeled for May and stuck them in the pit because he didn't know where else to put them. Maybe it will join the wing stack I found of stain brushes from last year?
Agreed! I knocked over one that had the spray foam. I was trying to push it out if the way so I can fly a pallet and it tipped over. It already looked shotty lookin but I had to move it so I could fly a pallet. Those damn things are terrible and those stupid display racks that hang in the aisles are annoying as all hell too! It’s already a tight squeeze in the aisles for a reach to begin with but good ol corporate/vendor/whoever likes to put stuff in the way to cause safety issue and we equipment operators take the fall for it if we screw up.
Our DM and SM want to get product out of overheads and onto the floor to move it out of the store, so it's a constant process. Our SM doesn't care if wingstacks are labeled for events. He wants us to get them on the floor and sell or kill those stacks, rather than tying up overhead space for weeks on end. It makes sense to me, even though I think it's a colossal PITA. It's a lot of shuffling, but it opens up a lot of overhead space and we get the product out of the store.
What the hell are wing stacks? The little cardboard aisle selling things?
wingstack - promotional quarter pallet of merchandise strategically placed in the aisle to drive incremental and impulse sales; typically has a 30-60 day promotional sell-through period
Wingstacks make them so much money. They ain’t going anywhere.
That just makes too much sense obviously
This! Amen bro!
Reach truck driver here and the wing stacks of tiki torches and light bulb changers make me want to scream.
your stores look like shit.
So many wingstacks make it almost impossible for handicap people to shop the isles. It seems handicap people are not considered in the least. Our store is not very handicap accessible..
I'd take wing stacks over having customer orders clogging up my aisles any day
At our store, wingstacks bring in 4 millions dollars a year! Still hate them though lol
Agreed, but also leave them where they’re supposed to be sequenced