Consumers Express: model for narrow stores - Consumers Distributing opens prototype for long, narrow store buildings

Discount Store News, Sept 26, 1988

Consumers Express: Model for Narrow Stores

BRICKTOWN, N.J. -- Consumers Distributing unveiled a Consumers Express prototype here developed specifically for use in long, narros buildings.

The prototype, which features jewelry as a front-of-the-store section along a wall, varies from the standard Consumers Express format used in square-shaped stores, in which jewelry is located as an island department in the center of a racetrack layout.

Consumers Distributing is expected to convert most of its 81 traditional showrooms to either of the Consumers Express formats over the next few years. The two prototypes will enable the cataloger to make this move regardless of the building's shape.

Consumers Distributing launched its Express stores as part of an effort to revamp the $280 million jewelry and hard lines retailer into a profitable company. These moves, which focused on leveraging its operations into related business, include:

* Offering CE as a consumer electronics retailer on Telaction, JCPenney's interactive cable TV shopping service now available to about 4,000 homes in 10 Chicago suburbs. While CD declined to report its sales through Telaction, the cataloger reportedly is the highest volume general merchandiser on the system. CE's revenue on Tel-action are topped only by Express Marketplace, the service's supermarket retailer.

Consumers provides Telaction with merchandise transparencies. Telaction then produces the interactive TV presentation.

* Expanding it shome delivery system this fall into all markets where Consumers Distributing has stores. It is prominently playing up the service's toll-free phone number in all the chain's catalogs and fliers, airing direct response TV commercials and running ROP ads.

The Telaction efforts fall under the home delivery division, which draws its merchandise from a 50,000-square-foot warehouse adjacent to the chain's main distribution center and head-quarters in Edison, N.J. CE also pulls its goods from the home delivery division warehouse.

As for the CE prototypes, both formats remain self-service stores that use warehouse-type fixtures for all merchandise except bulky goods like ready-to-assemble furniture, which are displayed on Parson table flats. Jewelry and other small, pilferable consumer electronic and photo items are in the salesclerk-serviced jewelry department.

The 12,600-square-foot Bricktown unit merchandises 3,800 sku's--2,000 in jewelry and 1,800 in hard goods--about 40 percent of the items found in CD's annual catalog.

The CE format is radical departure from the standard Consumers Distributing store, which only features a serviced jewelry department. All other merchandise has to be ordered from the catalog.

Consumers Distributing launched CE to overcome the major merchandising problem facing the chain: the poor in-stock position of its showrooms, which range from 8,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet. When shopping the cataloger's showrooms, consumers select a product from the catalog without knowing whether it is available in the store. At times they discover the goods aren't in stock. In the CE setup, they instantly see what is available, just like at any other mass display retailer.

Consumers Distributing now has three CEs: the East Brunswick, N.J., store, opened as a warehouse unit, and the Bricktown and Eatontown, N.J., stores, as remodeled CD showrooms.

The cataloger will open four more CEs this fall, two new units in Lions Head and Cherry Hill, N.J., and two remodeled CD showrooms in Montclair and Roselle, N.J.

Consumers Distributing will have 88 stores after the new Consumers Expresses are opened, including seven warehouse units. A typical CD showroom produces about $2.5 million in sales, while a CE's volume is one-third or more higher.

CD also uses a different media plan for CE than for its showrooms. The merchandise in both programs, however, is usually the same goods drawn from the basic catalog.

This year's CD annual catalog is 284 pages, down 40 pages from last year, and isn't being distributed in CE markets. Consumers Express is using a 60-page "Best of Express" minicatalog.

Both operations will distribute the "Holiday Magic" minicatalog that merchandises just jewelry, giftware and toys. Consumers Distributing firs used the minicatalog last year.

CE also follows a different promo flier plan than the CD showrooms; the CEs are impulse shopping-driven units while the traditional showrooms tend to be destination stores. The CEs rely on biweekly 8-page and 16-page broadsheet fliers, printed on less expensive newspaper stock, while the showrooms use monthly 16-page and 32-page roto fliers.

Bricktown Store Refinements

The Bricktown store features a number of refinements that will be used in the upcoming CEs and that are also being phased into existing warehouse units. They include:

* Coding merchandise sections by color on both the walls and signage above fixtures. Gray is used for jewelry; blue for photo and electronics; orange for housewaers, small appliances and RTA; yellow for juvenile; and green for sporting goods, toys and seasonals.