Store operations
Exclusive Brand Outlet Operations Checklist: Daily, Weekly and Launch Routines
An exclusive brand outlet operations checklist is the set of routines a brand's own store runs every day, every week and at every launch, each item with a photo and a yes-or-no question, so an area manager can read one store or two hundred without visiting. The daily routine covers opening, mid-day and closing; the weekly routine covers stock, dockets, training and housekeeping that do not change by the hour; the launch routine covers the ten days around a new collection or a festive docket. This guide gives all three as tables and lists, then the variants for apparel, footwear, electronics and jewellery outlets, where the items differ more than most head offices expect.
What an EBO checklist covers that a retailer's audit does not
In an exclusive brand outlet the brand owns the standard, the store is the brand's face on the street, and the customer who walks in has usually chosen the brand already. The checklist therefore lives in the vocabulary of the store itself: facade, window, mannequins, fixtures, trial rooms, billing counter, grooming, dockets and display standards. A distributor's or general trade checklist, built for a brand's presence inside someone else's store, counts facings and shelf share instead; that is the one place the two vocabularies part, and an EBO checklist copied from a general trade template will ask the wrong questions.
Ownership is layered. The store manager owns the daily routine and answers for it by 10:00. The area manager, typically responsible for eight to fifteen outlets in Indian brand networks (a working range from field structures the author has seen, not a statistic), owns the weekly read and the visit. The visual merchandising team owns the docket and reads the window photos. Head office owns the launch calendar. The checklist is the one document all four read.
The daily routine
Fourteen items in three passes. Opening takes fifteen to twenty minutes before the doors open, mid-day five, closing fifteen. Every item needs a photo taken live in the app except the two that need a number.
| Pass | Item | Photo | Question | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening, before 10:00 | Facade and signage | From across the road | Is the signage lit, the glass clean and the shutter fully up with no stickers or posters? | Store manager |
| Opening | Window and mannequins | Each window, straight on | Is the window dressed to the current docket, mannequins styled and tagged, lights on? | VM lead or store manager |
| Opening | Floor and fixtures | Each bay | Is every fixture full, folded or hung to standard, with size runs complete on display? | Store manager |
| Opening | Trial rooms | Each trial room | Is each trial room clean and lit, with a working hook, mirror and stool, and no leftover garments? | Floor staff on duty |
| Opening | Billing counter | Counter and screen | Is the counter clear, the POS logged in, and carry bags, tissue and printer rolls stocked? | Cashier |
| Opening | Team grooming and huddle | Team photo | Is everyone in uniform with a badge and groomed, and did the huddle cover today's target and offer? | Store manager |
| Opening | Music, cooling, fragrance | Thermostat or AC panel | Is the AC at the standard temperature, the brand playlist on, and fragrance running? | Store manager |
| Mid-day, 14:00 | Floor recovery | Busiest bay | Has the morning's disturbance been refolded and rehung, with sizes back in order? | Floor staff |
| Mid-day | Trial rooms recheck | One trial room | Are trial rooms clear of garments and clean after the lunch rush? | Floor staff |
| Mid-day | Walk-ins and bills so far | No photo; enter the numbers | Are walk-ins and bills to 14:00 entered, with the gap to today's target noted? | Store manager |
| Closing, after 21:30 | Cash, card and UPI reconciliation | Settlement slip | Do cash, card and UPI totals match the POS day-end, with any difference explained? | Cashier, store manager |
| Closing | Floor reset for tomorrow | Each bay | Is the floor reset to standard, so tomorrow's opening is a check and not a rebuild? | Floor staff |
| Closing | Stock movement and pending transfers | Transfer register or system screen | Are today's inward and outward transfers entered and the pending list reviewed? | Store manager |
| Closing | Shutter, alarm, lights | Shutter down, alarm panel | Are window lights on the timer, back-office lights off, the alarm set and the shutter locked? | Store manager |
The weekly routine
- Monday, docket check. Every window and hero fixture photographed against the VM circular and sent to the area manager and the VM team, with what changed this week and what did not.
- Tuesday, stock. Count the top twenty options and their size runs, list the gaps, and raise the request to the warehouse the same day.
- Wednesday, training. A twenty-minute session on the week's product story, one roleplay of the greeting and one objection, and a five-question quiz on the app.
- Thursday, deep clean. Fixtures, mannequin joints, mirrors, trial room curtains, AC filters and signage boards, photographed before and after.
- Friday, weekend readiness. Saturday and Sunday roster confirmed, carry bags and gift wrap counted, offer signage up, and the weekend offer loaded in the POS and tested with a dummy bill that is then voided.
- Saturday, manager's floor hours. Two hours on the floor observing greetings and trial room conversations, with no back office. The notes feed Wednesday's session.
- Sunday, the week's numbers. Walk-ins, bills, conversion, average bill value, returns and the list of tickets still open, sent to the area manager by 22:00.
- Every fortnight, the area manager's visit. The visit uses the store visit report format at /learn/store-visit-report-app-for-area-managers/ and re-audits the daily items against the store's own photos.
The launch and festive docket routine
- Day minus ten: the docket arrives and is checked against this store's window count, mannequin count and fixture types. Mismatches are raised as tickets to the VM team the same day, not discovered on the night.
- Day minus seven: props, signage and collateral are received and counted against the packing list; anything missing is ticketed.
- Day minus three: launch stock is received and checked to the allocation, size runs confirmed, and price tags checked against the launch price list.
- Day minus one, after closing: windows and hero fixtures dressed, photographed and sent for approval; corrections made before opening.
- Day zero: opening photos of every window and fixture by 09:45; the team briefed on the launch story, prices and the offer; the outgoing collection moved to the marked bays.
- Day plus three: the area manager's launch audit covers docket compliance, staff knowledge and sell-through of the launch options against plan, with corrections ticketed.
- Diwali, Pongal, Onam, Eid, Christmas, Akshaya Tritiya and the wedding season are each a docket with a date that differs by region. The routine is the same; the calendar is not, and a head office that sends one docket date to every region will find Kerala dressed for Onam late and Punjab dressed for Diwali early.
Category variants
The frame above holds for every category. The items inside it do not, and the differences are where a generic template fails.
| Category | Daily items that differ | Weekly items that differ | Launch items that differ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel | Trial room checks twice a day; folding and hanging standards per fixture; complete size runs on display; mannequin restyle mid-week if the docket says so | Size run count against the display standard; alteration register cleared; hanger and tag audit | Mannequin styling sheet followed look by look; the look book on the floor; outgoing season moved to the marked bays |
| Footwear | Display pairs with the right shoe out and polished; try-on stools, mirrors and socks stocked; wall sizes matched to the stockroom | Stockroom size audit by option; display pair rotation so display shoes do not fade | Hero wall change; size availability card at the wall; try-on stock of the launch styles in the two largest sizes |
| Electronics | Every demo unit powered, charged, logged in and on brand demo content; price and spec card per model; security tethers; accessories wall full | Demo content and firmware update; dead demo units ticketed and replaced; exchange and finance rate cards current | Demo unit installed on day minus one in demo mode; EMI card and launch offer signage; one live demo per hero model |
| Jewellery | Safe opened with two keys and the register signed; trays laid to the tray plan; gold rate board updated by 10:00; weighing scale calibration sticker current; CCTV recording | Tray-by-tray weight reconciliation; tag and certificate audit; appointment register reviewed | Collection tray layout; wedding season staffing; hallmark and certification signage; appointment slots for the launch weekend |
Scoring and the area manager's view
Each daily item is a yes or a no with a photo; the day's items roll into a daily operations score out of 100, and the stores rank. The area manager's morning read is the network's opening photos by 10:15: which stores have not opened, which have opened without photos, which items are a no for the third day running, and which tickets are ageing past their SLA. Ten minutes, before the first store call.
Two sentences from the floor are worth learning to hear. "Photo baad mein bhejta hoon" means the item was not done at opening. "Sab theek hai, sir" with a score of 100 every day means the checklist is being ticked and not walked; the controls for that are at /learn/how-to-stop-backdated-store-photos-and-fake-checklists/. A store scoring 84 to 94 with a different miss each day is the honest store, and usually the better one.
Running the three routines in BorentisOps
The routines above are a template; the generic version for any store type is at /learn/store-operations-checklist-template-india/. BorentisOps, the store operations platform at /solutions/products/borentisops/, runs them on the store phone with a photo and a question per item, live capture locked to the store's location and to the time window each pass belongs to, scoring and ranking every morning, and a ticket to the named owner when an item is a no, escalating up the hierarchy on SLA. Drishti, its visual merchandising AI, checks the window and hero fixture photos against the docket in seconds, which is what makes the Monday docket check and the launch day zero readable across two hundred stores. The Wednesday session runs through its training module with the quiz; dockets and circulars live in documents with read receipts; the area manager gets the 19:30 digest with photos.
The daily operations score sits beside the sales conversation score from Borentis Floor on one store scorecard, so a store that opens to standard but does not convert is read as a selling problem and a store that converts in spite of a broken routine is read as a fragile one. BorentisOps is priced per store, works offline in basements and malls with poor signal, and runs in Hindi, English and Hinglish. POS, HRMS and warehouse feeds for the cash, roster and transfer items are described at /solutions/products/borentisops/integrations/.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an EBO daily checklist take?
Fifteen to twenty minutes at opening, five at mid-day and fifteen at closing, for the fourteen items in this guide. A daily routine that grows past about 25 items gets faked, because the team cannot complete it honestly before the doors open. Anything that does not change by the hour, such as stock counts, deep cleaning and training, belongs in the weekly routine instead.
Who should own the checklist in an exclusive brand outlet, the store manager or the area manager?
The store manager owns the daily routine and completes it, with the cashier and floor staff owning their items. The area manager owns the weekly read, the fortnightly visit and the re-audit of a sample of stores. The visual merchandising team owns the docket and reads the window photos. Head office owns the launch calendar. One checklist, four readers, with the photo as the shared evidence.
Is the checklist different for a franchisee-run EBO?
The items are the same, because the brand owns the standard whether it owns the store or not. What changes is the fix loop: the franchisee's staff complete the routine, the franchisee sees the same photos and scores the brand sees on the same day, and a failed item becomes a ticket to a named person at the store rather than a letter to the franchise owner. Franchise agreements increasingly reference the operations score as a standard.
How do you stop the daily checklist becoming a tick-box exercise?
Keep it short, require a live photo per item taken inside the app with the location and time locked, make the fix loop visible so a no leads to something happening, and have the area manager read the photos rather than the score. Re-audit a sample of stores unannounced within 48 hours of their self-audit. A store scoring 100 every day is a signal to look, not a reason to relax.
Related reading
- BorentisOps, the store operations platform
- Store opening and closing checklist app
- Store operations checklist template for India
- Visual merchandising audit software with AI
Where Borentis applies this
- Execution Scorecards: See the floor before the P&L does.
- Launch & Offer Execution: Know your launch landed, on day one.
- Playbook Adherence: Your playbook, finally observed.
Borentis is the Agentic Operating System for Customer Interactions, built for Indian retail floors: consented one-tap capture on the advisor's phone, every conversation scored against your playbook with the evidence behind every number, leads created when a number is heard, and coaching from your own best conversations.