In a nutshell, my idea is to color, shape, number, and letter-code a shoe stockroom so that as soon a shoe get's out of place it will stick out like a sore thumb. I will be creating a YouTube video and website soon that has more details. Below is a brief overview of the idea. Sorry if it is confusing! It's just a rough draft.

Many, maybe even most retail shoe stores have unorganized stock rooms. Have you ever waited for more than a few minutes for a sales associate to reappear from the back room only to give you the bad news that they are all out of your size? Chances are it was there, but unfortunately not readily visible for the employee. Yes, modern technology has granted us the ability to search a store's inventory database for availability, but this is rarely done, especially for the busier stores in larger cities. Also, even if the store inventory system says the desired shoe and size is available, it doesn't solve the problem for locating it among the mess in the back.

The manager and employees of shoe stores are not to blame. Granite some stores could more diligently keep the stockroom organized; the underlying reason for the mess is the font-sizes used on shoe box labels are way too small. Adidas for example, uses a font size that is around 8 pt.

Here is the solution. First, create a white-round label where the shoe-size is printed in a black font that is as least size 72 pt. Second, use color-coded stickers to distinguish between sex, shoe category, and individual style. For example, men's stickers are round, women's are square, and children's are triangle. These stickers will have two-digit + one letter style numbers printed in a font-size of at least 72 pt as well. The size of the sticker is around 1.5 inches in diameter and can be visibly read from over 30 feet away

Now let's say the store sells sports shoes. Each sport should be given a unique color code for the style stickers. For basketball, let's make it orange. Each brand will have a number range. For example, Adidas men's basketball gets orange 1 through 15 or however many is needed. Nike can get 16 through 40, etc. So let's say we have the new Adidas Kevin Garnett shoe and it's style number is 12. Each color the shoe comes in will get a letter in addition to the style number. Such as...12a, 12b, 12c. For example, the all black Kevin Garnett shoe will have a large round sticker on the box that is orange in color and has a style number of 12c, or whatever letter is chosen.

All the shoe boxes in the store are given their coded style stickers and organized accordingly. Corresponding stickers are put on the display shoes. Therefore, if someone is asking for the all-black Kevin Garnet shoe, the sales associate goes to the men's orange section of the stock room and finds the section for orange 12, and will find 12c in the desired size.

More information to come.

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