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| Carol Daus - Editor |
One cannot help but notice that most of the big-box retailers are promoting the outdoor living room in a big way this spring. Lowe’s tells consumers, “Let’s open the family room.” Home Depot declares, “Your favorite room of the house is no longer in the house,” and that you can “cook like a gourmet in your outdoor kitchen.” Home Depot is even offering a $100,000 backyard retreat sweepstakes giveaway.
As a specialty retailer or dealer, you may find these high-budget ad campaigns intimidating, but this type of promotion is probably attracting more customers to your store than you realize. These ads not only bring national awareness to outdoor-living products, but also indirectly encourage customers who do not like shopping at the big boxes to visit your store. Most shoppers for outdoor-living and hearth products do not enjoy traipsing through a 120,000-square-foot Wal-Mart or Home Depot only to discover a lack of distinctive, high-quality products and knowledgeable salespeople.
Instead of focusing on what the big boxes and chains are doing, it makes more sense to concentrate on what customers want. The extremely popular California-based Trader Joe’s chain is the perfect example of a retailer that has been successful because of its understanding of today’s grocery shopper. Instead of copying the large grocers that erect monolithic stores with aisle upon aisle of merchandise, Trader Joe’s operates much smaller stores that simply offer products and services that appeal to customers. When grocery consumers are surveyed, most do not enjoy shopping in mega grocery stores. This is one of the reasons that Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, is introducing its Fresh & Easy stores this year in the United States, starting in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. Their stores will be small (around 10,000 square feet) and will concentrate on offering fresh, nutritious foods and prepared meals to go in a pleasant environment, a concept that appeals to today’s grocery shopper. By using similar strategies that focus on customer behavior, retailers of outdoor-living, hearth and barbecue/grill products will create a shopping experience that keeps their customers coming back.
In this issue, we profile a number of successful specialty retailers who understand that their consumers prefer shopping in a relaxed and beautiful setting with store associates who excel in customer service. Retailers such as Lexington, Ky.-based Housewarmings (p. 26); Indianapolis, Ind.-based Godby Hearth and Home (p. 18); and Gilbert, Ariz.-based BBQ Island (p. 22) are successful because they have a strong understanding of their customers’ likes and dislikes. Even Redland, Calif.-based Backyard Outfitters (p. 14), which was founded by a former lawn and patio buyer for Home Depot, has developed its own unique strategy to be more than just a big-box outdoor-living store. Like Trader Joe’s and Tesco, each of these retailers has created a successful business model because they understand and practice one of the most important principles of retailing: give the customers what they want.
Carol Daus
Editor
carol@peninsula-media.com
PHPR May/June 2007
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