Lasting impression

The park­ing lot and store vestibule offer super­mar­ket cus­tomers clues about what to expect on the rest of their shop­ping trip. If shop­pers see a messy park­ing lot or the store looks dingy when they walk in, they are likely to cast a watch­ful eye for the remain­der of their visit or even head for the exit.

Many super­mar­kets that have been delay­ing invest­ing in these areas are now look­ing for inex­pen­sive ways to make a big impact, say indus­try observers. “They have been hold­ing off, but you can only delay putting money back into the store for so long,” says Harry New­ton, direc­tor of sales and mar­ket­ing for Struc­tural Plas­tics Corp., a Holly, Mich.-based maker of dis­play sys­tems. “They are look­ing for inex­pen­sive but high-impact ways to spruce up their high-traffic promo areas and vestibules.”

The amount of space being devoted to the front-end is also shrink­ing. Observers say many super­mar­kets are look­ing for ways to make the most of the oppor­tu­nity to impress shoppers.

“As super­mar­kets are fac­ing com­press­ing mar­gins and increased com­pe­ti­tion, they can’t afford poor marks for cus­tomer ser­vice or pro­vide an infe­rior shop­ping expe­ri­ence. The front-end is a make-or-break propo­si­tion,” says Jim Vance, pres­i­dent of Pan-Oston, a Bowl­ing Green, Ky.-based man­u­fac­turer and designer of retail check­out products.

He says there are a num­ber of fac­tors that retail­ers must con­sider in order to deter­mine the right front-end con­fig­u­ra­tion, includ­ing foot­print, aver­age and peak weekly sales, bas­ket size, trans­ac­tion size, labor costs, store hours, shrink and mer­chan­dis­ing strategies.

“Retail­ers are look­ing for solu­tions that are mod­u­lar and scal­able and adapt to chang­ing needs,” he says.

Retail­ers are also look­ing for mod­u­lar, cus­tomiz­able sur­rounds that can be tai­lored to stores’ demo­graph­ics. Tech­nol­ogy is aid­ing in mak­ing for a dif­fer­ent front-end experience.

Observers say mobile POS and iPhones, tablet com­put­ers, smart­phones and other mobile devices are hav­ing an impact on all areas of the front-end, includ­ing motor­ized shop­ping carts.

“The biggest trend we see is that the Inter­net is tak­ing on a real strong posi­tion as a shop­pers’ tool,” says Steve Scrog­gins, senior vice pres­i­dent of sales and mar­ket­ing at Rogers, Ark.-based Assem­bled Prod­ucts Corp., which man­u­fac­tures the Mart Cart brand of motor­ized shop­ping carts.

The com­pany is respond­ing to retailer requests to inte­grate tech­nol­ogy into its motor­ized shop­ping carts. Scrog­gins says retail­ers are look­ing for motor­ized carts that can have a tablet mounted on them as well as a USB port so that users can plug in their own devices to use them and keep them charged as they shop. A smart­phone mount option will avail­able mid-summer 2012 and the tablet mount will fol­low later in 2012 or early 2013, says Scroggins.

Gro­cers are also seek­ing equip­ment that is durable and sus­tain­able. “There is a return to value, and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity is here to stay and con­tin­ues to get stronger and stronger,” he adds. Assem­bled Prod­ucts achieved Green Plus Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the Durham, N.C.-based Insti­tute for Sus­tain­able Development/Green Plus, a part­ner with the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce. Scrog­gins says the Green Plus Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a third-party cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that eval­u­ates the full spec­trum of sustainability—green, plus peo­ple and eco­nomic per­for­mance practices.

Motor­ized shop­ping carts appeal to older con­sumers as well. As shop­pers get older and less mobile, there is an increased demand for reli­able motor­ized shop­ping carts, says Sue Schae­fer, vice pres­i­dent of retail sales at Dane Tech­nolo­gies, the Brook­lyn Park, Minn.-based man­u­fac­turer of SmartKART motor­ized shop­ping carts and other equipment.

“Our motor­ized shop­ping carts can hold up to 800 pounds and have an auto­matic brake that holds its posi­tion,” she says. “That is extremely impor­tant as these carts are being used by shop­pers with lim­ited mobility.”

The com­pany has adapted its motor­ized carts so they can also be used to retrieve shop­ping carts in the park­ing lot. Called the QuicKART, Schae­fer says it saves on labor and work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion claims. “One [worker com­pen­sa­tion] claim can be $20,000, and the cart is roughly one-quarter of that.”

In addi­tion to sav­ing on labor, she says the QuicKART allows for staffing flex­i­bil­ity, as the carts can be quickly rounded up by any­one who has been trained to use the equipment.

Multi-use carts

As house­holds and stores get smaller and shop­ping habits change, the tra­di­tional shop­ping cart is being redesigned. Paul Giampavolo, pres­i­dent of Safe-Strap Co., a Whar­ton, N.J.-based shop­ping cart man­u­fac­turer, says carts have to be flex­i­ble and adapt­able. Safe-Strap intro­duced the two-tier Trans­porter cart in the third quar­ter of last year to address the need for com­pact shop­ping cart design while accom­mo­dat­ing peo­ple shop­ping with chil­dren and cus­tomers pur­chas­ing larger items.

The company’s Shop-Along line offer a com­fort­able and secure seat­ing area that can accom­mo­date adults and chil­dren, and the large stor­age area under the seat is per­fect for bulk mer­chan­dise pur­chases such as paper prod­ucts or soft drinks, com­pany offi­cials say.

“It is a com­pact cart with roomy bas­kets,” he says. “The seat flips up so that the cart con­verts quickly from a stroller cart to a flatbed cart for those who are not shop­ping with chil­dren but are pick­ing up bulky items.”

He says there are a num­ber of other unique fea­tures to the Trans­porter. “The bas­kets were specif­i­cally designed to hold reusable shop­ping bags, it han­dles effort­lessly and the Trans­port has a styl­ish and con­tem­po­rary look,” Giampavolo says. “The stroller seats come in vibrant col­ors and the frames can be accented to match. The biggest inter­est so far is in the red and black; and the blue and black color scheme really looks fresh and makes a bold design statement.”

One major devel­op­ment that will have an impact on shop­ping cart man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers is the new sig­nage on shop­ping carts warn­ing par­ents against putting infant car­ri­ers in shop­ping carts. The new warn­ing was devel­oped by the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Test­ing Meth­ods Inter­na­tional (ASTM) Shop­ping Cart Sub­com­mit­tee. Giampavolo is sub­com­mit­tee chairman.

“More than an esti­mated 20,000 chil­dren under 5 are injured by shop­ping carts each year,” he says. “Falls from the cart are the most com­mon cause of shop­ping cart-related injury in chil­dren under 5, and account for 82% of all injuries. Par­ents should only use an infant car­rier that is per­ma­nently mounted to the shop­ping cart.”

For tod­dlers, a shop­ping cart that looks like a race­car or space ship can make a trip to the gro­cery store more enjoyable—for both the child and par­ent. How­ever, for retail­ers these carts can take up more space than a tra­di­tional cart and are dif­fi­cult to stack.

“Our kid­die carts can be nested and the child is sit­ting up high, which par­ents tell us they pre­fer,” says Dar­ren Nor­ley, national accounts man­ager for RTS retail divi­sion of RTS Com­pa­nies, based in Austin­burg, Ohio. The com­pany also pro­vides cart cor­rals and san­i­ta­tion stations.

Tak­ing it outside

The brand­ing effort of any good retailer does not start at front door, observers say. It starts in the park­ing lot.

“The out­side of the store, includ­ing the park­ing lot and the cart cor­rals, is an exten­sion of the store and is a reflec­tion of the over­all brand,” says Tim Ryan, direc­tor of gro­cery mar­ket­ing for Brasco Inter­na­tional, a Madi­son Heights, Mich.-based cart cor­ral man­u­fac­turer. “From what retail­ers tell us, the park­ing lot is viewed as brand real estate more than it was 10 years ago.”

He says the com­pany started out mak­ing tran­sit shel­ters until it expanded into cart cor­rals when it began work­ing with retail­ers such as Weg­mans about five years ago. “We started work­ing with them when their cart cor­rals had blown away in the 90-mile-an-hour winds in Buf­falo, New York,” he says. “The story goes that one of our tran­sit shel­ters was nearby, and they found our name on the shel­ter and con­tacted us. Our alu­minum struc­tures are durable and sus­tain­able and we can build cus­tomized cart cor­rals with the retailer’s col­ors, logo and design to reflect their brand.”

Retail­ers are even view­ing their park­ing lots as lit­eral exten­sions of their stores, build­ing small gar­den cen­ters in their park­ing lots.

“Hav­ing live goods in the front of the store really brings some color and curb appeal and draws in cus­tomers,” says Struc­tural Plas­tics’ New­ton. “It also offers the oppor­tu­nity to inspire, inform and edu­cate.” He says this gives retail­ers that do not have room for full gar­den cen­ters the abil­ity to offer some limited-quantity SKUs.

Struc­tural Plas­tics’ new tilt-top dis­plays are designed to com­bine slant pre­sen­ta­tion with the abil­ity to store bulk stock below. “This max­i­mizes floor space and exposes more prod­uct to sell more prod­uct,” New­ton says.

In addi­tion to park­ing lots, store entrances and vestibules are areas that observers often say are neglected when it comes to mer­chan­dis­ing. “Sur­veys show that retail stores with attrac­tive, well-kept store entrance areas attract more repeat cus­tomers,” says Earl W. Ford, direc­tor of mar­ket­ing and cus­tomer ser­vice for Kansas City, Mo.-based Forté Prod­uct Solu­tions, a man­u­fac­turer of store dis­play equip­ment and merchandisers.

Ford says two par­tic­u­larly men­ac­ing issues fac­ing store entry envi­ron­ments are trash and smok­ing mate­ri­als. To keep store­fronts’ free of dis­carded smok­ing mate­ri­als, Forté offers a cig­a­rette dis­poser designed for proper smoke waste col­lec­tion, “with­out the has­sle of com­pli­cated main­te­nance and labor,” he says.

When mer­chan­dis­ing out­side weather is usu­ally an issue. The company’s U-Link Mer­chan­diser is plas­tic and can be used to mer­chan­dise impulse items out­side the store, with­stand­ing the weather. The four-foot units can be linked together.

Inside the store, Ford says that Forté Prod­uct Solution’s half-size mer­chan­diser is an ideal fix­ture that assists cat­e­gory man­agers and store staff to build attrac­tive, impact­ful end caps. The Forté 48-inch by 22-inch by 8-inch mer­chan­diser is easy to stock, holds sig­nif­i­cant prod­uct weight and is dimen­sioned to fit the store’s end aisle space, says Ford.

As many retail­ers look to get prod­uct to the floor quickly, they do not want their front-end to look unkempt. Com­pa­nies such as Safe-Strap offer prod­ucts that can dress up a pal­let dis­play. Safe-Strap’s Pal­let Guards are inter­lock­ing adjustable pan­els that sur­round a reg­u­lar ship­ping pal­let, trans­form­ing it into an attrac­tive dis­play. New this year is Pal­let Guard for End Caps, allow­ing retail­ers to add a sim­ple end piece to the Pal­let Guard to develop an inex­pen­sive end cap fix­ture that cre­ates a pow­er­ful visual, uni­fy­ing store design, say com­pany officials.

Front-end dis­plays need to adapt to the var­i­ous sizes and pro­por­tions of prod­ucts that are mer­chan­dised at the check­out. Rose­mount, Minn.-based Can­non Equipment’s Ver­sagrid flex­i­ble, con­fig­urable, mod­u­lar dis­play sys­tem allows a retailer to lay­out, arrange and rearrange per­ma­nent front-end sys­tems in a way that has not been pos­si­ble with tra­di­tional cus­tom fix­tures, say com­pany offi­cials. The mer­chan­diser enables retail­ers to cap­ture impulse pur­chases includ­ing new SKU intro­duc­tions, pack­ag­ing inno­va­tions and sea­sonal pro­mo­tions with one long last­ing front-end system.

“Retail­ers told us they were look­ing for a flex­i­ble way to adapt and update their front-end sys­tems to cap­i­tal­ize on changes in con­sumer pref­er­ences, prod­uct inno­va­tions and cor­po­rate direc­tives in a way that just was not pos­si­ble with tra­di­tional cus­tom fix­tures,” says Kenny Ram­sey, Cannon’s vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing and new prod­uct development.

“It is pos­si­ble to have a front-end sys­tem that max­i­mizes space, increases flex­i­bil­ity, uses stan­dard parts and enhances a shopper’s over­all expe­ri­ence while deliv­er­ing increased sales and prof­its to retailers.”

The per­ma­nent mod­u­lar dis­play is designed to last 10-plus years and uses stan­dard com­po­nents that can be eas­ily rearranged into dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions for cross-merchandising space, say offi­cials. Shelves, pock­ets and bins can be changed out, rearranged or locked into place. A unique bracket sys­tem with up to ¼-inch ver­ti­cal adjust­ment enables very tight pack outs to opti­mize space. Plus retail­ers can eas­ily add or change cool­ers into the sys­tem. The sys­tem is on a grid that offers hor­i­zon­tal adjust­ments with stan­dard heights of 54 inches, 57 inches, 60 inches and 63 inches. 

Reduc­ing shrink at the front-end

One trend in front-end mer­chan­dis­ers is the need for attrac­tive dis­plays while pre­vent­ing theft.

The EWT (Expand­able Wire Tray) shelf man­age­ment sys­tem from Trion Indus­tries, the Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based fix­ture man­u­fac­turer, can help retail­ers man­age back­stock and high theft items under the check­out and at cus­tomer service.

The shelf man­age­ment dividers keep all items neat and well orga­nized, auto feeds and faces items, and allows easy ful­fill­ment by checker or CSR, says Tony Kadysewski, Trion’s mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions manager.

Items are “requested” by pick card, which the cus­tomers select while shop­ping, then “redeem” for the item is at check­out or guest ser­vices. “Obvi­ously the biggest use is high theft items like shav­ing sup­plies, cold meds, preg­nancy tests and even Prepa­ra­tion H, which is highly shoplifted,” he says.