'Green' products beckon as higher-ticket items - hardware and lawn and garden products - Discount Industry Annual Report: part 2: Merchandising and Productivity Analysis

Discount Store News, July 16, 1990

`Green' Products Beckon As Higher-Ticket Items

New products that environmental worries have spawned, such as can crushers and mulching mowers, promise to add a bit of sparkle this year to the hardware and lawn and garden categories.

Otherwise, hard lines merchandisers still are looking for the smash hits that have eluded them for several years.

Lacking a runaway success category, hardware merchandisers are emphasizing basics, controlling inventory by culling, promoting prices aggressively, seeking out better value buys, and concentrating on department organization and being in stock.

And a merchandising study from the National Retail Hardware Association emphasizes anew the need for fundamentals of merchandising, proper end capping, cross-merchandising and use of dump bins.

"I wish I could tell you about eight categories that were blowing out the door, but I can't," said Frank Schutzman, hardware buyer for Fisher's Big Wheel, New Castle, Pa. "I don't see anything hot, except for a can crusher for recycling."

Water filters were supposed to be a smash hit two years ago, Schutzman said, but they are proving to be a slow build category, rather than an instant success.

Fisher's Big Wheel is attempting to make special buys that "will shove value to customers," Schutzman said.

Lacking any hot product category, Fisher's "is hot to get better management," he said. The chain is reviewing every product in an attempt to decrease inventory and get better turns. Schutzman said the reduction will come by eliminating an item here and there, rather than entire categories.

One Northeastern chain is approaching hardware merchandising through better efforts to stay in stock and more aggressive price promotions, the chain's divisional merchandise manager said. A new aisle merchandiser from Royal Tools is bolstering hand tool sales, he said.

Bradlees also is using the Royal merchandiser, a series of open wooden bins on each side of a freestanding unit. Stanley is another of several vendors that provide tool bins as an alternative to peg boarding.

The chain recently expanded its Stanley tool line and "has done very well" with them on ad, the dmm said.

Father's Day was "a little disappointing," he said. He attributed a decline to the lack of newness of products, as well as lessened vendor promotion of the holiday.

In one exception, Black & Decker cordless tools did well for Father's Day, the dmm said, such as cordless screwdrivers at $14.99 and the cordless ratchet, introduced last year, at $39.99. Prices on motion detector light units from Intellectron dropped 15 percent more the past year to $14.99 on ad, $19.99 everyday. The floodlight bulbs sold separately now produce more profit that the motion detector unit itself, he said.

Environmental products will have "a big play in the future," the dmm predicted, even though his chain has yet to develop a strategy for merchandising such products as composters and the recycling bins that Tucker Housewares will introduce at the Hardware Show in Chicago next month.

"I'd love to see killer items come along, so we can make some money for a couple of years," the dmm said.

Meanwhile, the chain is attempting to keep its hardware departments, which aren't planogrammed, "as organized as you can be in hardware."

Indicating the potential for environmental products, Tucker, Housewares is introducing its five-sku line of recycling products that would sell for a total of $74 at suggested retails. They are: 12-, 16- and 20-gallon recycling bins, a metal rack for newspapers and a folding hand cart for hauling bins and bundles to the curb.

Their bulk suggests that the hardware department might be better able to accommodate the line than housewares.

Mulching mowers and organic fertilizers and pesticides also represent new opportunities for merchandising around higher tickets.

Mulching mowers, which grind grass clippings and blow them into the lawn to rot in place, sell for at least one-third more than conventional mowers. Nonetheless, consumers are accepting them because of the convenience of not having to bag grass clippings and an ever lengthening list of localities that ban grass clippings from their dumps.

Towns in at least 32 states have such ordinances on their books. The latest is Chicago, which banned grass clippings, effective July 1, sending homeowners scurrying for alternatives.

As an indication of the potential for walk-behind mulching mowers, Sears, Roebuck & Co., Chicago, ordered 3,000 of its Craftsmen private label mulchers for 1990, the first season. It then quickly ordered 10,000 more.

Since mulching grass clippings puts nitrogen back into the soil, mulching mowers threaten to cut into lawn fertilizers sales by an, as yet, undetermined percentage.

The growing number of bans on yard waste also could promote sales of other equipment to deal with it, such as chippers and leaf shredders, as well as composting starters and composting bins.

Another new environmental product is Nature's Choice, a line of organic lawn and garden fertilizers from Northrup King, Minneapolis. Made of composted chicken manure, Nature's Choice will cost consumers at least twice as much as chemical fertilizers to buy the same amount of plant nutrition.