There's no place like HoM - Rickel Home Center stores new format - HomeMarket Trends supplement - column

Discount Store News, April 23, 1990 by Laura Liebeck

There's No Place Like HoM

With domestics and RTA furniture in boutique-type settings along with fix-up products, Rickel's new HoM format is a bold departure from traditional home centers

Like Dorothy clicking her heels together and reciting, "there's no place like home," executives of Rickel Home Center hope their customers will make the same wishful chant.

This home, in Toms River, N.J., is spelled phonetically--HoM--and is the retailer's newest store format.

A retail home furnishings/home decor store set with a modern, contemporary flair, HoM is a cross between a traditional home center with its paint, hardware, electricals and lawn and garden departments, kitchen and bath showroom complete with expensive Kohler and American Standard fixtures, and upscale discount department store with housewares, ready-to-assemble furniture and domestics with comparison price tags.

The idea is that shoppers will be able to purchase all the products they need for their home in special boutique-type departments contained in one store.

Overall, HoM was designed to appeal to the "female shopper, the young homemaker, the maturing baby boomer who is establishing a household and is pressed for time, money, space and has a high taste level," explained Robert Harrow, president of the 50-store South Plainfield, New Jersey-based chain.

HoM is the brainchild of Rickel chairman Moshe "Mo" Meidar, who joined the home center chain last March. He said he developed the store concept over time from his European travels and visits to numerous store concepts.

The Toms River location became the choice for the first HoM store when Meidar and his new management team learned they inherited a new store lease.

Rickel, a 47-year-old home center chain, is abandoning the male-oriented home center format that has `intimidated' woman for its new female-oriented concept that management expects will entice both men and women. Success of the new concept may also be a survival issue for the chain which has struggled to keep pace with some of its faster-growing home improvement industry competition.

A conversion of the home center chain to the new HoM format will be complete in two years, said Meidar, noting that at the same time Rickel will scout for new HoM sites. No store will be closed for the conversion.

The first HoM unit was developed at a cost of $3 million, Meidar said. The store was designed by Retail Planning Associates, Columbus, Ohio.

At 67,000 square feet, HOM contains 30,000 sku's presented in two racetracks. The inner rim is for the fashion merchandise such as RTA furniture, domestics, window treatments, lawn furniture and storage products and is set on carpeted areas beneath an aqua grid ceiling.

The outer racetrack is geared to fix-up materials such as hardware, electrical supplies, lighting, housewares, lawn and garden, plumbing, kitchen and bath, and wallcoverings, all under an open gray ceiling. A flooring department will be added soon.

The hybrid store with its colorful store design in teal, purple and red is "discount oriented" in its pricing while maintaining a high fashion look, said Meidar. Four-color photographs and foam cut-outs of HoM family members remind customers of the specific departments and the family orientation of the store.

Open to the public as of March 29, Meidar already plans numerous merchandising changes.

RTA furniture, a major focus in the HoM store, will be expanded both in floor space and in sku count. Domestics, now a licensed department, may come under HoM management and will be enlarged with more sku's, particularly more vendor labels. Expansion is also slated for housewares, lighting and lawn and garden, said Meidar.

The department expansions will be accomplished without diminishing the size of existing categories, he said. Instead, departments will be enlarged as a result of reconfiguring existing space--which should add another 10 percent to the selling area--and by narrowing the expansive 6-foot racetrack aisles down to 4 feet if necessary.

Another future change is the downsizing of the gondolas, said Meidar. The Toms River store, is furnished with 8-foot gondolas. Future stores will be equipped with 6-foot gondolas, Meidar said, which will further open up the store.

Perhaps the biggest of the upcoming changes will be in RTA furniture.

Currently, RTA furniture is located in two areas of the store, in departments called kitchen furniture and home entertaining, which are adjacent to each other, and home office. Meidar said in future stores RTA furniture will be consolidated into one area in the inner racetrack and include more floor space, manufacturers and sku's.

Already, RTA furniture is represented by such manufacturers as O'Sullivan, Wallace, Bush, Sauder, and Fanta Furniture. Meidar declined to name new additions.

RTA furniture is presented prominently in the home decor area in each of the two departments, making a sort of horseshoe around domestics and storage products. More than any other department in the store, RTA furniture is displayed vignette-style complete with accessories to "enhance the look," said Harrow.