Going from a blank canvas to a fully stocked truck took longer than Mac Tools distributors AJ Bowlin and Stewart Brown had hoped. Where initially the two believed the process would take only two to three days, Bowlin notes that it took them five days working from 8 AM to 8 PM each day.
“The tough part is you start with a bare, empty truck and obviously, you'd like to match the layout of what your old truck was,” Bowlin explains, “and then you realize, ‘Hey, these cases don't fit on this shelf.’ So you end up moving the same product, probably four or five times before it's in its final slot.”
While organizing the truck, Bowlin went for a “comfortable, but impulsive” organization style. He wanted the most commonly sold products right in front of the customer so they could easily find them, but also easily grab their attention.
In this longer and wider truck, Bowlin has more space for displaying new products. In the past, the new products mainly sat on the dash, but now he can scatter them more around the truck, giving customers the opportunity to pick them up and try them out.
