We continue to invest in refreshing and remerchandising our stores. Throughout the year, we launched new visual merchandising tools and operational initiatives to ensure our members and customers are better able to navigate our stores and find what they are looking for with greater ease.
Our Supply Chain team created a new first to market strategy focused on key categories, such as calving supplies or fence posts, to improve the availability of seasonal products when our members and customers need them. These items are now “front loaded” into our store inventory at the start of the season. This means seasonal items will be available when our members and customers need them.
We focused on keeping the top 1,500 best-selling product in-stock and available for our customers. Our Supply Chain team achieved a consistent 98 per cent in-stock performance throughout 2017 on these top 1,500 articles. In addition to our focus on keeping our top items in stock, we now have more than 6,000 items listed in our product catalogue on UFA.com displaying product in-stock and availability by store.
Customer service is at the core of everything we do in our UFA Farm & Ranch Supply stores, and it is our goal to drive operational excellence while empowering our store teams to provide an unparalleled customer experience. To help gauge our customer service, we utilize a third-party company to evaluate our stores with a “Mystery Shop” (or secret shopper as it’s commonly known) program. This program measures a comprehensive view of the entire shopping experience including service levels, store standards and product knowledge.
In November, Fort McMurray-based Spruceland Lumber, owned by UFA since 2007, was proud to provide a $35,000 in-kind donation to the NSUUR (pronounced “insure”) group of charities, as part of a $50,000 financial commitment UFA made when the wildfire hit the Fort McMurray community in May 2016. NSUUR is a group of charities that work together in a co-operative way, to support families who did not have sufficient insurance to rebuild their homes.
> Driving Forward >>>
AgriBusiness Retail looks forward to continuing to drive improvements in the overall shopping experience for our members and customers. We remain focused on delivering great customer service, in-stock position, improved product assortment, point of purchase materials and competitive pricing. We will continue to drive operational efficiencies, increase store productivity and grow our business in the markets we serve.