Skip to main content

Now on Clearance: Qs and Js

Before you read the rest of the post, read the title and try to figure out what I'm talking about.

Quilts and Jammies?

Quinces and Jams?

Queens and Jesters?

Quetzals and Jackalopes?

No, in fact, it was the letter Q and the letter J that were on sale. Once proud recurring sponsors of Sesame Street, these two letters have been reduced to the clearance shelves at Target:

What is cruelest of all is that the other letters are not also on sale. J and Q have been singled out for persecution:

I guess that Target has an algorithm that puts things on sale when they don't sell quickly enough, but how much sense does it make to apply that algorithm to individual decorative letters? Will this make Quentin or Jane more likely to adorn the walls with their names? Or worse, will it induce Kate or George to recast themselves as Qate and Jeorge in order to avail themselves of the bargain?

Comments

  1. I had no idea you have a blog. First Facebook and now this! So much for the internet being an isolating factor in the lives of contemporary humans--I feel I know you so well, and yet we've never met.
    Ha ha! Ana

    ps--good news at Target for all the Jorges of the world.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I actually know something about this in the global sense but not, necessarily in the specifics(having been a buyer and all at Target.)

    The reason the the letters Q and J are on clearance is that Target has too many of them compared to the other letters in the alphabet. They're sitting on excess Qs and excess Js and need to get rid of them. Why would this happen? There are three possible answers for this demand planning problem.

    Usually when a vendor recommends a family of products in different flavors or sizes, they have a guess about the rate of sale for each size or flavor. Sometimes this is based on good data (other retailers already selling the product) and sometimes it's just a wild assed guess. Presumably the good people who make letters have some algorithm that tells them that if "S" sales = X than "Q" sales = Y% of X. Target likely ordered based on these little algorithms and discovered that their guests purchased the letters at a different rate. This could be explained because the vendors data was bad OR because Target guests behave differently than other stores' customers. (Anyone in need of a sociological PhD thesis can delve into why Target guests would be demographically less inclined to decorating with Js and Qs.)

    A second potential explanation seems less likely, but would also explain the excess Js and Qs. If the manufacturer sells the products to Target in sets (each set = 5 As, 2Bs 4 Cs etc.) there would certainly be problems. This would create something called 'lumpy inventory' where you would find yourself having to order a complete new set of letters when you run out of popular letters. You would also be receiving more unpopular letters which don't sell. Any buyer worth their salt at Target would try to negotiate out of purchasing their products this way since this is a foreseeable inventory problem. However, it is conceivable that, due to better terms elsewhere in their agreement, the buyer allowed this to happen.

    There is a third explanation and it is the most simple: Someone screwed up and ordered lots of Qs and Js by mistake.

    Finally, it should be noted that Clearance at Target means gone . . . and no one is going to discontinue just two letters of the alphabet. I predict within a few weeks all the remaining letters all also have little red stickers.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can You Cross Your Toes?

Katie and I had a heated discussion the night before last. We were sitting on the couch watching Jon Stewart when she noticed a large, apparently cancerous growth sticking out of the bottom of my foot. She asked what the big lump in my sock was. "That's my toe," I responded, nonplussed. I had crossed my first and second toes, causing a lump to protrude from the bottom of my sock. Katie was quite alarmed. "You can cross your toes?" "Sure, can't you? Everyone can cross their toes!" "Of course I can't cross my toes. Who can cross their toes?" And I confirmed that Katie could not, in fact, cross her toes. Even manipulating her toes with my fingers, I could not get her toes to stay crossed. She just has very short toes. That led, of course, into a discussion of who was the freak. Were my long, crossable toes abnormal, or were her stubby, uncrossable phalanges the outliers? In case you're confused, here are some pictures. First, of my v

Leagalize drugs!

The Economist has a wonderful editorial this week about legalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly agree that the world will be better off by far if the United States legalized, taxed, and regulated illicit drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, and heroin. The goods that will come from legalization: 1. We will save the $40 billion the US spends trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. 2. We will save the costs involved in incarcerating so many drug offenders (as well as gain their productivity in society). 3. We will gain money through taxation on the legal drug trade. 4. Legalized drugs will be regulated, and thus purer and safer to take. 5. With all these savings, we will have lots of money to spend on treating drug addiction as a public health issue rather than as a law and order issue. We will have lots of money to fund treatment programs for addicts that are ensnared by the easier availability of drugs. 6. We will prevent tens of thousands of killings in countries that produce drugs when proc

2017 Prognostication Quiz FINAL POST: Questions 10 and 11, Stocks and Quakes

In the last post , I pointed out that Matthew D. and I were in a two-way tie at the top of the leaderboard with me holding the edge over him in the tiebreaker. For Matthew D. to have a chance to come from behind and grab the win, some significant December movement would be needed in one of three areas: the stock market, world earthquakes, or a convenient death. Here's what happened: 10. Stocks (December 29) How will stocks do in this first year of Trumponomics? Will the Dow Jones Industrial Average be up or down compared to the final close of 2016? Which way will the Dow go? a. Up b. Down The Dow Jones continued to rise throughout the month. I maintained my advantage in the tie-breaker. 11. Earthquake (December 31) How many big earthquakes (magnitude 8.0 or larger on the Richter scale) will there be this year? (Big earthquake counts from this millennium are indicated in parentheses.) How many big earthquakes will there be this year? a. None (2) b. One (7) c. Two (4) d. Th