Merchandising Grapple |
|||||||
申请号 | US13653819 | 申请日 | 2012-10-17 | 公开(公告)号 | US20130094935A1 | 公开(公告)日 | 2013-04-18 |
申请人 | Anthony L. Cameron; Kimberly A. Wright; | 发明人 | Anthony L. Cameron; Kimberly A. Wright; | ||||
摘要 | A merchandising grapple is disclosed for removing retail items such as beverage cans, bottles, boxes, and the like from shipping containers in groups and placing them in groups on display shelves within a retail establishment. The grapple has spaced features that receive and hold the items in groups of several items and may have a handle for gripping the grapple and a slip joint for adjusting a width of the grapple. A method includes stocking display shelves by removing items in groups from shipping containers and placing them in groups on display shelves. | ||||||
权利要求 | What is claimed is: |
||||||
说明书全文 | Priority is hereby claimed to the filing date of U.S. provisional patent application No. 61/547,780 filed on Oct. 17, 2011. This disclosure relates generally to the merchandising of articles in retail stores and more specifically to stocking or re-stocking store shelves with merchandise such as cans and bottles. A costly activity for grocery stores, convenience stores, drug stores, and other retail businesses is the restocking of merchandise on display shelves, the resetting of shelves, and merchandise rotation; i.e. the placing of newer merchandise behind older merchandise. Unlike warehousing and distribution activities where product is handled in pallet and case quantities, stocking retail shelves often involves placing individual units of a product or item or article on shelves. Thus, the rate at which product can be restocked or rotated per merchandising hour is limited by how quickly a human stocker can place individual items on the shelves. Similarly, a costly activity for Direct Store Delivery (DSD) companies also is the restocking and resetting of shelves. In these situations, there is an added productivity constraint in that DSD merchandisers are largely unsupervised and can be less diligent. Accordingly, the rate at which shelves are restocked and reset can be even lower in DSD situations. One specific DSD industry involves the delivery and stocking of soft drinks. Soft drink packaging varies from individual cans to PET bottles of numerous sizes including 16 and 20 ounce, 2-liter, and ½ liter 6-packs. Shelving configurations vary from single serve presentation in coolers, cold vaults, and vending machines to multipacs on grocery shelves and end-caps. Such variation in package and shelving configurations adds even more complexity to the merchandising of such items, and therefore limits further the productivity of people stocking and resetting shelves. A need exists for a system and method that improve upon the inefficiencies mentioned above and others. More specifically, a need exists for tools usable by those who restock and rotate merchandise on store shelves to increase significantly the speed and efficiency of these activities. It is to the provision of such a system and methodologies that the present invention is primarily directed. Briefly described, a merchandising grapple is disclosed for removing multiple items such as beverage cans and beverage bottles in a group from shipping containers and loading them as a group into a store shelf. In one embodiment, the grapple has spaced apart forks designed to receive and hold a group of several cans and to facilitate insertion of the group of cans onto a display shelf. In another, the grapple is configured to hold several PET bottles and has rails that fit beneath the shoulders or neck of the bottles so that they are suspended from the grapple. In use, several cans or bottles (or other articles) are grasped and held by the grapple and the entire group can be slid into an empty lane of a store shelf at the same time. Also, a remaining group of older cans or bottles can be removed from a shelf simultaneously with the grapple, a group of newer cans or bottles loaded in the grapple behind the older ones, and the combined group slid back into a lane of the shelf. In this way, shelves are quickly reset with merchandise rotation; i.e. older merchandise in front. These and other features, aspects, and advantages will be better appreciated upon review of the detailed description set forth below, when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawing figures, which are briefly described as follows. The entire content of the provisional patent application to which priority is claimed above is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Reference will now be made to the drawing figures, wherein like reference numerals, where appropriate, indicate like parts throughout the several views. The merchandising grapple 11 is formed with a handle 12 that includes an adjustable slip joint 13. A pair of forks 14 is attached to and project from the lower end of the handle and, as shown in The slip joint 13, detailed in Once the merchandising grapple 11 is loaded with a group of containers, the entire group can be slid out of their shipping container and moved to the display shelf. At the display shelf, the merchandising grapple and its group of containers are slid into the display shelf in one fluid motion. Once positioned within the display shelf, the grapple is released by relieving inwardly directed squeezing force on the grapple handle. The released grapple is then slid out of the display shelf from underneath the containers, leaving the entire group of containers on the display shelf. It will thus be seen that a group of containers such as beverage cans can be retrieved from their shipping container and placed on a display shelf in a very efficient manner that is much more effective and faster than old time single item stocking techniques where each container is removed and placed on the shelf independently. For example, if the merchandising grapple holds 6 containers as shown in The concepts embodied in the merchandise grapple of this disclosure are applicable to the stocking and shelving of a wide multitude of different products including, without limitation, food cans and containers of all types; boxes such as cereal and detergent boxes; bottles such as drink bottles, juice bottles, spray bottles, personal care product bottles and others; hanging packages; and virtually any type of container that is or can be shelved in queues on a store shelf. Thus, the merchandise grapple has wide multi-faceted appeal to a broad customer base. The following description of a specific example is presented within the context of shelving PET bottles such as 2-liter beverage bottles. It will be understood, however, that this is merely one example of an application of the merchandising grapple of this invention and that the invention is in no way limited to the shelving of PET bottles. In cases where one or two older bottles (or other items) remain on the shelf and merchandise rotation is desired, a user may first slip the grapple over the necks and beneath the shoulders of these older bottles, remove the older bottles from the shelf in a group, and fill the remaining space in the grapple with new bottles from their shipping container. The resulting group can then be placed back in the display shelf as described above. In this way, the shelf is restocked and rotated with older merchandise in front of newer merchandise. This procedure is common to all embodiments of the merchandising grapple of this invention and greatly enhances the efficiency of rotating stock on a display shelf. In some instances there is a need to place 2-liter bottles (or other merchandise) on a higher shelf and behind earlier dated product for rotational purposes. These higher locations on display shelves may be difficult to reach without step stools or ladders. For such situations, an extension handle, illustrated in Many products to be shelved are not bottles and/or do not include rims or necks such as those usually found in beverage bottles. The embodiment of the merchandising grapple shown in In use, the slip joint is adjusted until the space between the arms 47 and 48 corresponds to the shape and size of a package to be shelved, be it a bottle, can, box, or other type of package. The arms can then be closed around such packages like jaws of a pair of pliers and used as described above to move the packages in a group from their shipping case onto a display shelf. In this embodiment, the scissor handles can be configured to curve upwardly or downwardly as needed. Further, the arms may be configured in any shape necessary to engage and carry product containers to be shelved. For example, they may be configured with angled cross sections as shown in The invention has been described herein within the context of preferred embodiments and methodologies considered by the inventors to represent the best mode of carrying out the invention. It will be understood by skilled artisans, however, that a wide range of additions, deletions, and modifications, both subtle and gross, might well be made to the illustrated embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the claims. |