Ames revamps Vt. stores to meet Wal-Mart threat - Ames Department Stores Inc.; Vermont; Wal-Mart Stores Inc

Discount Store News, August 21, 1995 by Richard Halverson

RUTLAND, VT. -- With Wal-Mart looming over the horizon, Ames has remodeled to prototype six of its 13 Vermont stores and spruced up five others with minor remodeling.

Including Rutland, the six are: Bennington, where Wal-Mart has gotten approval to open its first Vermont unit; Derby; Essex Junction; South Burlington; and St. Albans, where Wal-Mart and the town fathers are battling the state environmental board over its rejection of a Wal-Mart store. Ames celebrated the grand reopening of the six units two weeks ago.

By yearend, Ames expects to have 23 remodeled stores to its Mt. Pocono prototype.

In addition, Ames will open two new stores this year: Mt. Olive, N.J., and Dudley, Mass., for a total of 307 stores. Rutland, located 10 miles from Killington, a popular ski area, and an hour's drive from Lake George, N.Y, is one of 70 resort stores in Ames' merchandising classifications. The others are ethnic stores, also about 70, and college stores, about 130.

Accordingly, the Rutland Ames makes sure it stays in stock with picnic supplies and water sports gear for summer tourists, and ski accessories for the winter crowd, said district manger Gary Huber.

In addition to the Ames remodeling, which took eight weeks, the landlord also refurbished the exterior of the 35-year-old building (previously a King's discount store) and built a new Grand Union supermarket next door, giving a fresh new look to the entire Green Mountain Plaza shopping center. For now, the only discount store competition in Rutland comes from a recently relocated Kmart. Ames also operates a second unit in Rutland, which underwent a minor push-and-shove remodeling last year.

The Green Mountain store remained at 55,000 sq. ft., but customers remarked that the store has become bigger, due to the remodeling.

That more-expansive look stems primarily from opening up the front of the store to provide a more spacious entryway and the improvement of sight lines.

The customer service desk was in front of the entrance but now is located to the left, out of the way of entering traffic. Other major changes include moving consumer electronics to the right front corner and doubling the floor space, as well as providing soft corners in the rear for domestics and home furnishings, two of the major merchandising thrusts for Ames.

The remodeling adds a 24-ft. gondola of party goods from American Greetings.

In other merchandising developments, Ames is moving away from house label apparel, such as its Quarters line, in favor of national brands. At the same time, it has developed a new house label for H&BC called Pharmacist Formula to compete with national brands such as Tylenol and Bufferin at substantially lower prices.

Its version of buffered aspirin, for example, sells for $2.99 for a 100-count bottle, compared to $6.29 for Bufferin.

The prototype moves apparel inside the racetrack, or map as Ames calls it: children's on the left, followed by men's and then women's. Dressing rooms are now in the center, instead of on a side wall.

The prototype also changes Ames' color scheme to tan and black, with teal accents, from the white and red it had previously used.

Color also comes from graphics, ceiling signs that denote departments and sidewall graphics that promote brands.

Those sidewall graphics take away display space, but higher gondolas in hard lines more than makes up for the loss.

Aisle width for the racetrack remains at 11 1/2 ft., but aisles between gondolas have been standardized at 4 ft.

A Four Seasons seasonal area occupies the left front corner of the store, while a monthly seasonal area, now set for Back-to-School, is located at the right of the entrance.

Many of the new features of the store just represent common sense and a catch-up with other discounters: automatic door openers, benches for customers, call buttons for customer assistance (with announcements over the public address system to advise shoppers of them) and baby changing stations in both the men's and ladies' rest rooms.

The store also includes four instant coupon machines in housewares, such as $1 off Liquid Plumr and 50 cents off Formula 409.

The store cuts space allocated to crafts by 25%, but by selecting only the best-selling skus and eliminating wasted space, Ames has been able to maintain sales levels in the category.

The remodel devotes extra space to domestics and RTA furniture. In rugs, for example, Ames now displays three times the number of skus.

Wal-Mart soon will surpass Kmart as Ames' major competitor, ceo Joe Ettore has said.

As well as the remodeling, two merchandising programs instituted over the past year also help Ames to meet the Wal-Mart threat, district manager Huber said. They are the 55 Gold senior citizen discount of 10% off on Tuesdays and the special buys program that Ettore instituted.

On Tuesdays, 30% to 40% of Ames' customer count is now senior citizens, and the increased traffic compensates for surrendering some margin to their purchases, Huber said.

At any give time as much as 20% of apparel is featured as a special buy, Huber said.