TAMPA, Fla. -- Executives from four of the nation's most respected convenience retailing chains traded insights on private-label snacks, daypart merchandising, analytics-heavy marketing strategies and other innovations yesterday during the 2006 Convenience Retailing Conference's Innovation Forum Revival. The theme: finding new solutions to familiar problems.
Last year we dabbled in the entertainment business, Hal Adams, vice president of merchandising for Valero Energy Corp., San Antonio, said during the forum. In the past year, the company's stores [image-nocss] have sold copies of the most recent Harry Potter book, Xbox games, new DVD releases and other higher-end merchandise not typically sold in the average corner store. We can learn just as much from [other channels] as they're learning from us.
CSP group editor Mitch Morrison moderated the forum's all-star panel, which included Adams; Brad Call, general counsel and executive vice president of marketing and human resources for Maverik Inc., North Salt Lake, Utah; Steve Kimmes, senior vice president of grow people for Kum & Go/Krause Gentle Corp., West Des Moines, Iowa; and Dave Yamaguchi, vice president of marketing for Holiday StationStores Inc., Bloomington, Minn.
Maverik, which does business in seven western states, has placed an unrelenting emphasis on promoting and reinforcing its proprietary brand. When Call shifted Maverik's marketing direction about six years ago, the company developed a branding bible and positioned its stores as Adventure's First Stop to help outfit customers for their next adventure. Today, every external marketing message passes through an Adventure Lens to assure consistency.
If [a branding message] is funny but it bounces off the lens, it doesn't work, said Call. The biggest problem [retailers in the industry] have is, what lens are we going to create? Figuring that out is 75% of the problem; once you do that, the marketing is easy.
Kum & Go's approach to marketing has gained a more analytical edge. People with a much different skill setstatistical analysishave begun populating the marketing department. As a result the department has become bifurcated, with an analytical focus to complement the more traditional functions of marketing and pricing. If you don't have the expertise, you hire it, said Kimmes. [This is] the most dynamic thing we're doing today.
Holiday Stationstores' daypart marketing strategy, meanwhile, has evolved in the 12 states in which it does business. Sales managers determine the merchandise mix by day-part (morning, afternoon, dinner and grazing) to create new sales opportunities for corporate and franchised stores. The chain is also mining gold from underdeveloped niches; a recent 10-store test of take-home meal solutions using a 6-foot by 8-foot coffin-case merchandiser has yielded some success.
In addition to homegrown opportunities, retailers continue to find new ways to maximize relationships with supplier partners. Whether it's developing private-label snack and packaged beverage programs like Valero has done or finding better ways to handle deliveries, the goal remains the same: to get more efficient at serving the customer.
With direct-store-delivery [suppliers], we need to better leverage our synergies, said Kimmes. Why can't we get deliveries at night when stores aren't busy so we're not tying up the lots? [Vendors] will realize they'll drive costs out of the system and pass the savings on to us, and then we can pass the savings on to the customer.
[Pictured (from left): Mitch Morrison, Brad Call, Dave Yamaguchi, Hal Adams and Steve Kimmes]
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