Merchandising

I posted about how I got started with Merchandising last year. I've been working more and more the last few months. Currently I'm employed by five different companies and there's never a week I go without some sort of work.

This is the perfect job for me because I set my own hours, pick which jobs I want to work and complete them on my time schedule. Since Greg & I are still sharing a vehicle, this works out wonderfully.

There are a couple of different job boards and websites with a ton of information about Merchandising if you are looking for some side jobs or extra income. You can start your search here:
Volition - read the forums, look at the job listings
NARMS - create a profile so jobs will be emailed to you or just search the job bank
If you have any questions or need more information about merchandising, feel free to leave me a comment.

Mystery Shopping

We have been in our own home for almost one year now. The end of August will be a year. Right before we bought this house I had started doing some mystery shopping. That led to finding out about merchandising (which is an extension of a lot of mystery shopping companies) and something I have started doing more here recently.

When you sign up for a mystery shopping company...and I NEVER PAID TO SIGN UP AND YOU SHOULDN'T EITHER!!...you have choices of:

• mystery shopping
• auditing
• merchandising
• demos
• surveying people
• theater checks

I personally didn't want to survey people or be a demo person (give away food in grocery stores, etc) so I always chose mystery shopping, auditing and merchandising. Auditing is simply going into a business and checking to make sure they have everything in order according to the "plan" that I print off from the internet. With all these companies a printer is definitely required! I have to print so many reports!

Most Mystery Shopping requires you spend some money up front and then you'll be reimbursed. Some pay additional money besides your reimbursement; some don't. I never accept any jobs where I had to put out a lot of money upfront except one time at Christmas. It was for a trendy store in the mall where I could spend up to $50.00 and they would reimburse the whole amount...I knew I could find a Christmas present in that store for one of my kids so I accepted that job and I was reimbursed for that purchase.

These are examples of mystery shopping jobs I accept on a regular basis:

• spend $1.00 for a parking garage assignment and then get paid $10.00 plus reimbursement
• spend up to $2.00 at convenience store and get paid $7.00 plus reimbursement
• did this one time - acted like I needed a storage place from storage rental - spent no money out of pocket but got paid $15.00
• I do restaurants I like to eat at (not allowed to name them) but they have been some of my favorites and my total meal for my family has been reimbursed - no extra pay, just reimbursement.

Merchandising is the job I have enjoyed the most. There have been a wide range of jobs I've completed that fall under this category. I'm currently working for 5 different merchandising companies. Two of them I am an Independent Contractor and the other three I'm actually on the payroll as a W2 employee. But all of the companies have a job board or some way of notifying me of what jobs are available and I accept or deny them...I don't have to work any job that doesn't fit into my schedule or I'm not qualified for.

Image via Wikipedia

Some of the merchandising jobs I've done lately are:

• Publix - and open up boxed candy bars and put them out for sale as single bars.
• Publix - keep up with a coffee display for the month of June (keep it clean and order the coffee that's needed)
• Sam's Club - count the Gatorade, Tropicana and Frito Lay pallets on display
• Publix - reset the entire chip row (worked with a team)
• Dollar General - reset the men's/boy's Fruit of the Loom displays
• Family Dollar - hung up new signs around the store; took down the old signs
• Shell gas station/Kangaroo Express - this is what I did this last week...Kangaroo Express bought out a bunch of Shell gas stations and for the last 5 days a team of us cleaned out all the old stuff in the store and brought in all new counters and merchandise and set it up in one day - 5 stores in 5 days.

This is just an example of the different types of Merchandising jobs available. There have been many more but you get the drift. It's a fun job because I interact with lots of different people and I have a flexible schedule and the pay is great!

Surprise! Surprise!

I've been doing some Merchandising work the last few months. I picked up a merchandising job working in a local CVS store (of ALL places...LOL) back before Christmas. I received an email last Friday from the lady who runs the company - she was saying there is a big job coming up in March and she had picked up some extra stores and she was just giving us a heads-up to make sure we were available. I sent her an email and asked her if she had picked up any additional stores in Pensacola (where I live) and if so could I work them. She sent me the list back and informed me that "yes, actually she HAD picked up some additional ones and she would love for me to take all of them if I could." There were 18 stores on the list!!! I was thrilled at the news!

I called Greg to tell him I had picked up 18 CVS stores I was going to have to merchandise in March.

His response "So, what does that mean?"

I'm a little baffled by his flat response. What do you mean "what does that mean?" Are ya kidding me? An extra bonus of money is what that means!

After a few more seconds of me realizing he's not too thrilled about this news I got off the phone and stewed for a few minutes. To make a long story short....after several phone calls back and forth between my two daughters, myself and my dear husband - the girls realized how upset I was at his lack of response so they realized they all better let me in on a little surprise they were holding back from me

I'm going to Hawaii on March 18th for 2 1/2 weeks

Felicia and Greg had been planning it and bought me a ticket as a surprise! Greg sent me a text message after Felicia told me the news and it said "Now you see why I wasn't happy about the job :-)" What a sweetie!

I contacted the lady this morning about the CVS jobs and told her about my surprise trip and asked her if she should re-assign the stores to somebody else or would I have enough time to do them. She said she was supposed to give us the work on March 15th. She doesn't want to re-assign the stores because she doesn't want to train anybody else so she told me to do what I can do the two days before I leave and then she would come in town and complete the stores for me!! Wow! Praise the Lord!