What employees would a greeting card store have?

It depends what part of the store you are focusing on and how hands on the owner is. In the actual store, you'll have the manager, assistant manager, full time and part time staff. These people are the ones who are doing the sales, dealing with incoming stock and the day to day stuff. In a greeting card store, it's unlikely there would be dedicated staff for shelf stocking and cashiers. The owner likely deals with the purchasing and overhead stuff that isn't day to day store operations.

Every greeting card store I've ever been in is very sparsely staffed, usually by one or two elderly women.

JoNightshade said:

Every greeting card store I've ever been in is very sparsely staffed, usually by one or two elderly women.

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LOL- that made me laugh.

It depends in part where the store is located. If it's at a mall, there needs to be more staff and management because the hours are generally longer. The owner may or may not work at the store. If she does, she'd likely have an assistant manager and/or a night manager to take over for her after she leaves. A store in a strip mall or in a small town would probably only have one person working at night, except during busy times. I believe Xmas is the biggest followed by Mother's day so there would be extra staff on hand. If the store was also part gift shop, there might be two workers.
Depending on what type of franchise, the owner would probably be the buyer. it's not the same as a buyer for a regular store, it would be mostly for inventory replenishment. The franchise would probably have their own brand and these days the cash register is probably hooked up to a computer to automatically replenish.
The owner might pick and choose items to stock in her individual store from a catalog or group of items.
The owner would probably do a fair amount of the stocking of shelves, as would the sales people, particularly if the traffic isn't that busy. The more employees, the less profit.

If the story took place 30 years ago, before the computer era, the owner would do a lot more paperwork and stock replenishment would involve manually counting. Since the owner would have less time to be a jack-of-all-trades, there would probably be additional staff.

Number of employees is relatively simple to figure out. Let's say the store is open 9 to 9, seven days a week (simple for calculating). That means you've got 84 hours to cover, usually with a minimum of two people. Although you could slide down to one person from 9 to 10 in the morning and from 8 to 9 in the evening, assuming you have no real sales during those periods. (The reason you need two people is to cover lunches, breaks, bathroom runs, sickness, et cetera.)

You'd probably want three people in the store from 11 - 6, although this depends upon sales volume. Obviously during Christmas, you increase your sales force. So going with three from 11 - 6, this means you've got 217 employee hours to cover.

One of these people will be the owner/operator. If two people bought the franchise, you'd probably see both of them working here. The owner would be the third person during the critical time periods, and would be putting in somewhere north of 50 hours a week. Probably very far north of 50 hours.

Owner would deal with what purchasing needs to be done, but for franchise operations, this isn't much. If national decides you're going to promote green llamas for Valentines Day, then so be it. Owner would do the purchasing, bookkeeping, and everything else to do with running the business and going out to help run the register or stock shelves as needed.

If a single owner, you'd have one or two other full-time, maybe three. These are your trusted employees, dealing with opening and closing when the owner can't be there.

So going back to the 217 hours, we'll subtract 80 hours for two full-time employees (you don't want to pay overtime). This leaves you with 137 hours. Owner covers 60 hours per week (more hours the owner covers the more money the owner doesn't have to pay out). That leaves 77 hours. Four part-time employees at 20 hours per week or eight part-time employees at 10 hours per week covers the rest of it.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

jclarkdawe said:

If a single owner, you'd have one or two other full-time, maybe three. These are your trusted employees, dealing with opening and closing when the owner can't be there.

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I like your analysis but I have the following reservation:

While I have not talked to any American Greetings/Hallmark people or any store owners, I'm of the opinion that franchise owners/operators will, generally, only hire part-time employees if they can, thus reducing their commitments to costly medical insurance.

I used to work at a branch of WhSmith which had two stores - a bookshop and a greeting card/stationary shop. There was one full time supervisor, four till-trained staff and a cleaner. The till trained staff worked part time.

Busy times were 10.30am-3pm Mon-Sat and we always had three staff on at those times.

The till trained staff would cover most responsibilities: shelf stacking, cashier, customer assistance. The supervisor would deal with cashing up, issuing change to the tills, any complaints. There was a manager who worked primarily at the other store who would deal with any sales reps.

Bing Zabriskie said:

Originally Posted by jclarkdawe
If a single owner, you'd have one or two other full-time, maybe three. These are your trusted employees, dealing with opening and closing when the owner can't be there.

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I like your analysis but I have the following reservation:

While I have not talked to any American Greetings/Hallmark people or any store owners, I'm of the opinion that franchise owners/operators will, generally, only hire part-time employees if they can, thus reducing their commitments to costly medical insurance.

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I was trying to stay simple. You're right, it can be better to hire part-timers only to avoid providing benefits. There's no requirement (yet) that employers give health insurance to full-time employees, but many do. It also helps on vacation costs, sick pay, and some other considerations. It may benefit you on unemployment and worker's compensation.

Work around for this is hiring someone for 35 hours.

But you need at least one other person that you can trust in running a small business. If you can get this with short hours, great. If you have to, you might have to give some benefits and/or pay. Thing is no way can you cover a store by yourself and keep it open enough hours. Something that's come up as a shock for way too many people who try it.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

I worked at Clintons cards in Glasgow for a couple of months - There was one manager whom we never saw, an assistant manager who did most of the work, then usually two or three staff on checkouts at the main tills upstairs, one downstairs at the secondary till, then one person on customer service whose job it was more or less to stand at the top of the stairs and tell people where to find stuff, and about four staff responsible for various areas of the shop (my gondola was 'Boyfriend / Girlfriend / One I Love). Your job was to do customer service for that area but also to maintain the stock on that particular section. There usually wasn't someone down stairs in the secondary part of the shop. The person on tills there dealt with any queries. Out of us, only about three I think were full time, the rest were all part time. Certainly the way they worked it was to only employ a skeleton staff all year round and just bring in part timers for the busy seasons like halloween, valentines, Christmas etc. There was also one security guy on at any time.

In my personal experience working at a gift-cards-flowers store, privately owned, in a small town:
Two part-time employees at the front. When not on the register, we dusted and stole candy from the candy counter.
One or two florists in the back.
The owner would come through and check in every so often.

Bing Zabriskie said:

I'm of the opinion that franchise owners/operators will, generally, only hire part-time employees if they can, thus reducing their commitments to costly medical insurance.

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You are absolutely correct. Additionally the cost of vacation and sick time, even raises because full-timers are entitled to more benefits than part-timers. Retailing has a very high turn-over rate because it attracts students and other folks who can't get a better job. In some cases fast-food pays more than retail. Management comes with a lot of responsibility, but relatively low compensation. The owner of the store would be lucky to find little old ladies who just want a job to keep busy, because those are the folks who will stick with the job. Staffing issues are harder for the night shift, because generally the older (and more responsible) workers want daytime hours. If the owner is lucky, she'll find a wonderful, mature high school student who's going to college in the area who will work for five or six years in the same job.