SAM'S ENHANCES CENTER STORE

DAN ALAIMO

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Judging by its newest store, Sam's Club here is committed to brightening and broadening its Center Store presentation.

A club that opened last month in Sheffield Village, Ohio, replaced a 14-year-old unit in nearby Elyria, Ohio. The differences observed by SN in an exclusive preview the day before the grand opening are representative of the recent advances Sam's has made in merchandising its Center Store grocery categories.

For example, the aisles are about a third longer than the old club, allowing for whole categories to be merchandised continuously without having to break them up between aisles, and the width of the aisles has been increased from 10 feet to 12 feet to facilitate movement of consumers with large flatbed carts.

Meanwhile, skylighting and a lighter ceiling color make the packaging more attractive. The old club was much blander, darker and harder to navigate, observers told SN.

"We want to give a value to our members, and that value also includes the shopping experience," said Tom Turner, a store-planning supervisor for Sam's. "That experience includes brighter stores, the wider aisles and the longer spaces to put out merchandise and categorize it."

Together with aggressively priced, national-brand grocery products, Sam's expects the store to increase sales in the grocery area, which represented 40% to 50% of the club's sales in the old location, Turner said.

The racking in the new club uses a white-and-red color scheme "and it makes the merchandise stand out more than the old green steel we had at the old building," Turner said.

"This is the newest prototype," said Dan Orlando, the club's general manager. "Every aisle has been laid out to maximize sales."

The longer aisles allow Sam's to devote one full pallet on the ground level to the fastest-moving grocery products. Slower-moving items are stocked on the next shelf up in limited facings, replacement pallets are on the third level and the top level is used for general inventory stocking, Orlando said. The result is a cleaner, more organized look. The endcaps can also be related to the products in the aisle, and that is where Sam's stocks seasonal items and other special purchases, he said.

Eight new clubs have opened since Jan. 31, said a Sam's Club spokeswoman. For the year beginning Feb. 1, the Wal-Mart Stores division plans to open 50 to 55 new clubs, about half being relocations or expansions of existing facilities, the company has reported. Most will be based on the same prototype used in Sheffield Village, which was initiated about five years ago, she said, adding that the new signage used in the club was developed last year.

The new club is 135,000 square feet, while the old facility was 102,000 square feet, Turner said. It carries between 3,500 and 3,700 total stockkeeping units. The additional space has allowed Sam's to add ancillary departments, like produce and bakery, and put in large frozen cases with doors big enough for forklifts to enter.

The selling space for frozen is about the same as in the old club, "but you have more stockroom area, so we don't disappoint our members by being out of stock on an item they want," he said.

Sampling is a big part of Sam's food strategy and the larger space will allow the retailer to do more of it. For example, during the grand opening weekend, the club ran 40 demos all day, Orlando said. The demos included tastings of candy, brownies, Famous Amos cookies, Millstone coffee, buttered popcorn, canned chicken breasts, tabasco sauce, trail mix and praline cookies, said Kathy Davison, demo coordinator at the Sheffield Village club.

After the grand opening, the club will run 15 to 20 demos on the "weekend" days of Thursday through Sunday, she said. This is up from 10 to 11 at the old facility. On the "weekdays" of Monday through Wednesday, the club will run 12 demos, up from five to eight in the old store, Davison said.

This is especially significant as Sam's sees huge sales increases from sampled items, Orlando said. "We look at the average rate of sale and there can be up to a 400% sales increase because the consumers got to try the product," he said.

Another change Sam's has made in recent years is to move away from the huge packaging it carried in its early days to more multipacks, Orlando said. For example, it will carry a large box of cereal that will satisfy the needs of its institutional customers, but inside will be two smaller containers better suited to the consumption patterns of families, he said. Another example is a 12-pack of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. "That makes it more of a consumer item, as opposed to the big jar of pickles that would be a business item," he said.

Turner told SN that while the club still wants to serve small-business members -- the ones who made the company strong over the years -- it also wants "to have some items that consumers can buy.

"That makes it a good shopping experience for both our business and Advantage [consumer] members," he said.

Also, business members usually purchase something personal when they come to Sam's Club, Orlando said. "So we need to be able to address all those needs with one-stop shopping, and that's what this new building allows us to do."