BIG Y'S REMEDY FOR CONGESTION

MICHAEL SLEZAK

PLAINVILLE, Conn. -- Orchestrating an intimate, easy-to-shop cough-and-cold department in the bustling atmosphere of a large supermarket isn't necessarily an easy task, but it is an important one.

Jan Winn, director of

health and beauty care and general merchandise at Big Y Foods, Springfield, Mass., embraces the task like a master conductor. With 30 stores in her chain, ranging from 25,000 to 65,000 square feet, the challenge is to make shopping for cough-and-cold products a simple, convenient and harmonious process.

Big Y's new 54,000-square-foot World Class Market, which opened its doors here June 20, is an example of the chain's commitment to cough-and-cold and to health and beauty care in general.

"When you get to 50,000- or 60,000-square-foot stores, Big Y does a great job of creating a sense of intimacy in departments. You don't feel overwhelmed. You go into an aisle, and you know exactly where you're going. Everything is categorized," Winn said while perusing the store's 20-foot cough-and-cold section. "There's a million philosophies to merchandising. Mine is to make it simple for the customer."

With many cough-and-cold shoppers in a hurry to either cure their own ailments or help cure the sickness of someone close to them, easy shopping is a must in the high-grossing category. At Big Y, cough, cold and allergy products are placed in a run between analgesics and stomach remedies. Cough, cold and allergy caplets, tablets and sprays get a 12-foot section, while cough drops and liquids get their own 8-foot section alongside.

"Some stores will merchandise cough syrup running [along bottom shelves] all the way under analgesics and the whole cough-and-cold category, which I think is a little difficult to shop," explained Winn, who has been in the nonfood business for 20 years and at Big Y for three. "We try to segment the products in a way the customer may need to use them. If you're looking for a cough syrup [at Big Y], it's right here in front of you in 8 feet, vs. other stores where you have to walk 24 feet underneath the analgesics to find it."

Winn said she planograms the section using the computer program Spaceman, and she places the best-selling stockkeeping units as well as children's products at eye level.

"We're evaluating the categories based on our own scan data, not on Scantrack or Towne-Oller or anything else, so it doesn't get any better than that," Winn said. "Those [computer planogram] programs really work. What's difficult for HBC in every company is that the sections are not quite the same [from store to store]; the gondolas are this height, the gondolas are that height. So that makes it a lot more challenging if you're creating more than one or two planograms. That's why it's taken us longer than [other departments], but we're getting there."

Seeing store-to-store differences as a positive, however, has made each individual Big Y cough-and-cold department a more finely tuned sales instrument, Winn said.

"Some retailers are cookie-cutters where the stores are exactly the same. But if you're willing to be flexible and willing to take a chance -- take the shelves high and try this and try that -- in the long run you get the very best out of every store," Winn said. "The stores are not all exactly alike, and that's good. They all have their personality. But there's consistency within the company, too. They all look like Big Ys. We have consistency but flexibility."

At the Plainville store, Winn has added a new, higher shelf, which she said she feels "shows off the product very well and enables us to expand our current footage." Canopy lighting illuminates the entire cough-and-cold section, adding to the overall ambience. Slanted shelves with clear, plastic gates that hold the product in place are another feature that helps customers find products and also makes the section easier to restock.

Winn said she considers manufacturer input when making stocking and merchandising decisions. "We have our philosophies as a company as to what we're trying to accomplish. But I do see the salespeople as experts in their products. So I stay open-minded to what they have to say and their suggestions, as long as they make sense to Big Y as a company.

"Manufacturers are very good with support. It's a competitive category and getting more so," Winn added. "It could get confusing [with the large number of SKUs], but it is our responsibility with the way we merchandise and the way we advertise to be clear. I can't say in our stores people have never been confused by anything, but largely the way we merchandise the store, we try to make it as plain and simple as possible."

Big Y's cough-and-cold season begins in September and runs through March. The harsh New England autumns, winters and early springs create a climate for promotion and advertising of the season's sickness-fighters.

"In September we set up a cough-and-cold rack and/or endcap in every store in the company. My HBC buyer has put that planogram together based on our scan data, based on what makes sense, based on new items and on all the evaluation," Winn explained. "The planogram will be executed in mid-September and we'll begin advertising in late September."

In the large remodeled World Class Market stores, Winn said cough-and-cold will get its own endcap; in smaller stores, a Robitussin off-shelf rack will display various cough-and-cold merchandise from a variety of manufacturers.

"The customers are getting a nice mix of products [on endcaps and racks from] the major players: P&G, Robitussin, Tavist, Effidac and we'll try and get some newer items out there," Winn said. "Obviously, we decide who goes on there by who's willing to participate in our ads and support the brands. A large part of the time, ads determine who gets on.

"I don't believe in free rights. We're really happy to take on and support new items as long as the manufacturers are willing to support our efforts and get into our advertising," she added. "Manufacturers have a huge responsibility to do a lot more than to get Big Y and Stop & Shop and other retailers to stock the items. They then have to support it: in our ads, in their national advertising. That's very important to me. If they're not going to commit, why should I?"

Winn said she allows each individual store some flexibility in merchandising the cough-and-cold endcap.

"Some stores merchandise small packages of Kleenex on a wing. That depends on the store. I would hate to take all the creativity away from the stores," she said. "We planogram the endcap and we planogram the aisles. But if they want to do their thing to some degree and do tie-ins, that's fine. I'd never want to stifle the stores."

From September to March, Winn said Big Y advertises cough-and-cold on a weekly basis, though ad sizes do vary.

"We may have four or five [cough-and-cold] items featured or we may have 15 if we have a full page. It depends on the ad space we have," she said. "The key is to keep telling your story. If you see a Robitussin in an ad, you can count on seeing our Top Care [private label] Tussin right next to it in the ad. So that will take up space as well, but there's a good investment."

During her interview with SN in mid-August, Winn said she was in the process of finalizing plans for new cough-and-cold products for the upcoming season. Several, though, had her excited already.

"Celestial Seasonings, the tea, is coming out with an herbal cough drop. The package will have the same type of graphics as their tea. We'll probably merchandise them right next to the Ricola, because they're natural," she said. "Sucrets is coming out of the tin, too. The tin is going to the Smithsonian, and they're coming out in a plastic box and in a bag.

Winn also said many manufacturers are jumping into liqui-caps as the latest category formulation.

"Rather than pouring cough syrup, you can get a dose of the syrup in pill form. It's easier if you're working or traveling. It's more convenient," Winn said. She added she is aware of the following new liqui-cap products for the upcoming season: Drixoral cough and sore throat and cough and congestion liqui-caps; Robitussin liqui-caps for cold and flu; Dimetapp liqui-caps for cold and flu, and Alka-Seltzer Plus nighttime liqui-gel.

Winn added the other new trend in cough-and-cold is the sugar-free cough drop, which she has already stocked in the private-label Top Care line. Big Y performs a major cough-and-cold analysis once a year to weed out weak sellers and stock new entries.

In addition, Winn said Big Y now stocks cough drops in HBC instead of with candy because the products are more appropriate for her section.

"Cough drops have been a stepchild for grocery for many years, in the candy aisle. The cough drop manufacturers realized they were missing a beat," she said.

But as with every category, merchandising isn't everything. Winn said she is aware that price is a major factor in the category, and as a high-low operator, her stores try to remain competitive in pricing with other top area retailers.

One source in the area familiar with cough-and-cold said that over the past several years (during Winn's time at Big Y), the chain has made a major push to strengthen merchandising and promotion in the cough-and-cold category to become one of the region's major players.

Winn said her chain averages 23% to 30% margins in the cough-and-cold category.

"We look at the competition when we make pricing decisions. Margins have been eroding largely due to competition. And it's forcing the gross profit down," she said. "Obviously, we try to be competitive with who we feel are our major competitors. Fortunately for us, our customers have taken very strongly to our private label and we can make up a little bit of margin there."

And indeed, private label has become a high note for Big Y's HBC department and cough-and-cold category. Nearly every major SKU in cough-and-cold at Big Y is flanked by a Top Care private-label counterpart at the Plainville store. And most feature bright red and yellow signs pointing out the price difference between Top Care and the leading brand.

Big Y now has around 600 Top Care HBC SKUs, far more than the some 100 private-label HBC SKUs the chain had before Winn joined their crew.

"The Top Care quality is equal to or better than the national brands. Plus with the marketing efforts of our company the customers have been very, very willing to try the products and are now repurchasing them," Winn said. "And Topco is very aggressive about coming out with a store brand that is equivalent to the national brand as soon after the national brand is launched as possible."

Winn said she pushes the private label hard in ads and promotions and that the practice is essential to instill consumer confidence in the store brand. "If we don't have confidence enough to shout it out in our ads, I don't think the customer will either. We do a very good job in keeping the private label out in front of our customer."

For private label, "we have signage, special ads, messages on our grocery shopping bags, radio ads, billboards -- a real complete package," said Claire D'Amour, vice president of corporate affairs at Big Y.

The chain is also strict about using its own people to stock shelves.

"It's Shelves 'R' Us," said D'Amour. "If you're doing a reset, everyone that's working in the aisles is perceived by our customer as one of our employees. If they want to know where the tomato paste is, you don't want them to just get a grunt."

Winn said allowing the store personnel to stock the department shows the chain's commitment to HBC in general.

"One chain I know has a merchandiser who says, 'Take the cough-and-cold out, we're putting coffee here,' and it just goes away," Winn said. "This happens because there's no commitment from the top of the company.

Currently, Winn added, nonfood accounts for about 12% of total store sales at Big Y. She said for this statistic to continue, customer service and appropriate merchandising are a must. "We try to offer customers, first and foremost, even before product, customer service. I can have every SKU of every product in the world, but if we don't take care of the customer inside the store, they're not going to come back here," Winn said.