Sears rolls out the power to East Coast - Sears Roebuck & Co

Discount Store News, August 20, 1990 by Richard C. Halverson

Sears Rolls Out the Power to East Coast

FREEHOLD, N.J. - Sears Roebuck & Co. opened a new Sears of the '90s store here Aug. 1, its first unit in the East that features all seven of its power formats.

A small number of stores in the Midwest, including five in Milwaukee, had already offered all seven formats, but the Freehold store was the first time Sears' look of the '90s reached the East Coast.

What customers saw in the two-level store in the brand new Raceway Mall was an emphasis on Sears' strongest suit in apparel, kids' clothing, and a concerted effort to develop a fashion image for its weakest department, women's apparel.

Indicative of that approach, the main entrance from the mall parking lot leads directly into the main focal point of the store - a Kids 'n More department that features a padded play area for kids to jump around in, a TV monitor for watching cartoons and a Wurlitzer jukebox that plays hit tunes for free.

The main level mall entrance leads directly into what the company calls The Women's Store at Sears, featuring a merchandising coup, its new Cathy Hardwick designer line of better cotton separates, previously a department store label.

In men's apparel, Sears is taking a more conservative approach, offering dress shirts that bear a private label that reads, "Since 1886 Sears Roebuck & Co," as well as offerings that lean heavily toward Levi's and its Dockers line and Arnold Palmer golfing apparel.

The Home Life department rounds out the departments on the ground floor, fashion level. Throughout the fashion floor, the shop concept gives customers the feeling that they are browsing in separate nooks and crannies that zigzag around the racetrack aisle, instead of shopping a single, huge store. Home Life, for example, is broken up into shops such as carpet, bed and batch, etc.

Kids 'n More is divided into separate areas for a tiny toy shop that offers just pre-school merchandise, McKids, and infants', and boys' and girls' apparel.

Women's apparel features shops such as intimate apparel, shoes, and the Mainframe juniors shop.

In one corner shop called the Work Wearhouse, men's wear offerings include such stalwarts as Sears coveralls at $24.99 and blue Dickies workshirts at $11.99 in a completely separate setting from Dockers pants at $33.96 and Levis 550 white wash jeans at $34.96.

The Freehold store offers no furniture, nor does Sears plan to open a freestanding Home Life furniture store for the multi-store market. Within a 20-mile radius, three other Sears stores, Middletown, Seaview Square and Toms River, do offer furniture, said manager Joseph Olson.

To enhance the fashion image, Sears employs copious amounts of trac lighting, video monitors showing MTV style offerings, contemporary mannequins, the latest in apparel racking and signage that emphasizes brand offerings, and signs that boast of "A Whole New Store to Explore."

During the traditional ribbon-cutting ceremony, Stanley Knipes, executive vice president for product services, said "the contemporaneousness of the store is what sets it apart. This store shows what the new Sears is all about."

Freehold devotes the lower level of the 143,000-square-foot store, including 93,000 square feet of selling space, to hard lines, starting with the Brand Central format of brand name major appliances and consumer electronics. Sears now has rolled out Brand Central to all of its 851 stores.

The rest of the hard lines categories, except for automotives, are lumped together into the power format that Sears calls the Craftsman Home & Yard Center.

As the very name shows, Sears is capitalizing on the equity in its Craftsman private label that has become a national brand in its own right. Although Sears has brought in national brands, such as Makita and Skil power tools and Troy-Bilt garden tractors, the Craftsman name gets the spotlight in signage and bulk power aisle displays.

Consisting of hardware, lawn and garden, sporting goods, home improvement and small electric appliances, the Craftsman Home & Yard Center features about 30 percent to 40 percent more selling floor space than the same categories in a conventional store.

That permits more space for displaying, for example, sporting goods, including a larger assortment of exercise bikes, treadmills and even a boxing punching bag.

Automotives, the last of the seven power formats Sears is introducing, has been whittled down in size and displays the fewest changes of the seven in terms of merchandise offerings.

Unlike many a traditional Sears auto center, set apart in its own building in the parking lot, the "Car Care by Sears" at Freehold is an integral part of the store. A service customer waiting room opens off a much smaller automotives parts and accessories department.

The store offers only 13 service bays, compared with as many as 40, but Sears expects to maintain service department revenue by putting more mechanics to work on a car for faster turnover.

Over the past two years, Sears had introduced brand name performance tires from Bridgestone, Pirelli, Firestone and Yokohama and Delco batteries, so the new power format holds no surprises in terms of brand offerings.