GMDC CONFERENCE ATTENDEES SHOP FOR SPRING

JOEL ELSON

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Simple in-and-out promotions that are competitively priced caught the eye of some of the 244 grocery retailers who were working on spring season bookings at this year's General Merchandise Marketing Conference.

Sponsored by the General Merchandise Distributors Council, Colorado Springs, Colo., the conference, Sept. 11 to 16, drew a total of 1,067 retail, wholesale and supplier executives. "Promotions are more important than ever due to competition in the market," said Dennis Griffiths, general merchandise category manager for Associated Food Stores, Salt Lake City. Griffiths was looking for promotional merchandise that could be used as price- off items or as buy-one-get-one-free offers.

"Being in the food business, anything we can do to tie in with food-related promotions or to cross-merchandise food and nonfood is a good way to go," he added.

For Mike Meyer, director of health and beauty care and general merchandise at Homeland Stores, Oklahoma City, the show provided an opportunity to discover some new general-merchandise promotions. "We purchased a couple thousand laser pointer lights at $5 that we'll price at $9.99 and clip-strip at checkouts," he said.

"They're very popular with kids who will buy these and go crazy with them. It's a hot item. We also saw a lot of pet supplies and bargain-book programs," he said. Homeland is considering going with a direct bargain-book program rather than through its news distributor because of improved margins, said Meyer.

Jimmy Thompson, director of HBC and general merchandise at W. Lee Flowers, Lake City, S.C., said he was most interested in promotional shippers of in-and-out general merchandise that could be merchandised easily in smaller store formats. "Merchandise like household items, including food-storage containers, that doesn't take up much space in stores is of interest for us. We also saw Beanie Baby products."

Thompson noted W. Lee Flowers, which services more than 50 IGA stores, primarily in North and South Carolina, would probably book merchandise that carries $5 to $6 price points for the spring season. "Pricing is certainly an issue in our stores and so we looked for lower pricing," he said.

Buyers said pricing in general seems to be stable. A source at Copps Corp., Stevens Point, Wis., who was at the show and asked not to be identified, said "companies haven't raised prices like they used to because of competition. This hasn't been a major problem."

"We haven't seen any [price] changes resulting from the drop in the Asian economies," noted Tom McNamara, divisional general merchandise merchandiser at Fleming GMD, King of Prussia, Pa.