Paper Mate Displays Make the Grade In the Back-to-School Sales Game

Do you remember the excitement of putting on those shiny new shoes, packing your bookbag with the pocket for your new pens and heading out the door with high hopes? It was, of course, back-to-school time.For companies that make school-related products, such as the Stationery Products Group of the Gillette Co., this annual rite of passage is a year-round obsession."From a merchandising point of view, our biggest selling period is for back to school," says Steve Bartolucci, senior buyer for the Stationery Products Group at Gillette's Paper Mate facility in Santa Monica, Calif. "That typically starts after the 4th of July and ends in September. That means we have a 60-day period in which a high percentage of our sales take place. We do have other seasonal business, but it doesn't come anywhere near the back-to-school crunch."At the Paper Mate facility, more than 800 million writing instruments are manufactured each year. Bartolucci, who has been with the company for 11 years, purchases packaging materials and point-of-purchase displays for brands such as Eraser Mate , Flexgrip, Dynagrip and Sharpwriter.Bartolucci says that the display process begins when Gillette's sales and marketing groups develop a need. The Stationery Products Group, headquartered in Boston, (also Gillette's corporate headquarters) is home to the sales and marketing staffs, as well as the in-house creative resources department, which is responsible for the design of graphics, packaging and displays. Once sales and marketing has worked with creative resources to develop a concept, communications begin with Bartolucci for purchasing at Santa Monica. Discussions include cost parameters, quantity, materials and attributes of the design.When choosing a display producer, Gillette first evaluates the difficulty of the project: if complex, the producer should be close to Boston to allow for daily development checks. If the project is relatively easy and can be handled over the phone or by fax, a supplier closer to Southern California can be chosen, which allows Bartolucci to be more involved in the process."Recently, as a result of needing to have this bicoastal capability," Bartolucci says, "we've worked with at least one of our East coast suppliers to develop western manufacturing sources here. It allows them to cover the needs of the Boston creative group in terms of prototyping and engineering, but at the same time we can manufacture in Los Angeles, avoiding a lot of shipping and saving time."Bartolucci acts as the swing man between the Santa Monica and Boston facilities throughout the process. "I play a critical role in maintaining an awareness with the Santa Monica workers who will be involved with this display. I need to get my engineers aware of this display and thinking about how they will work with it," he explains.How Gillette worksIn addition to Paper Mate, the Stationery Products Group consists of three other primary franchises: Parker, Liquid Paper and Waterman. Parker Pen, acquired in mid-1993, remains in production at a facility in Janesville, Wis., and in plants in France and the United Kingdom. The Liquid Paper line is produced at a plant in St. Paul, Minn., and Waterman writing instruments are manufactured in France. Each of the four manufacturing facilities has its own purchasing function and operates independently, occasionally collaborating on a display."Paper Mate's product line is at the low end of the scale in terms of price point," Bartolucci says. "We have the disposable, bulk, high-volume writing instruments that retail from 99 cents for a multi-pack to $12 for a higher-end refillable pen. The price-point differentiation results in an abundant mix of product offerings and variations and individual SKUs in the Paper Mate franchise."The pens are rarely merchandised in individual product displays. Instead, displays that accommodate a full array of mix-and-match products are favored. Most of Paper Mate's products are carded or pouched and featured in power wings, in-aisle displays, shelf units, floorstands and endcaps. With the recent advent of warehouse-type stores, Gillette has even introduced tray packs and other multi-packs to veer away from plain, brown boxes. "Five years ago we didn't have any display vehicles for the office product side of the business," Bartolucci says, "Now the tray packs are the display vehicles."Catch his eye, make him buy"A perfect P-O-P display is easy to assemble, easy to load and an instant setup at the retail level," Bartolucci says. "From our point of view, a display should give a retailer a quick and easy way to make quantities of our product available without a lot of in-store activity required to get the display in front of the customer. They can literally set up one of these displays in about 30 seconds, put on their own price sticker and be in business."Bartolucci says Paper Mate displays are generic: they simply feature the Paper Mate franchise identification, rather than something specific like the benefits of Eraser Mate pens. A power wing display, for example, will typically include a brand mix featuring all of the new "hot" packages and products for the back-to-school period. If there is an on-pack offer that is special, a sign at the front of the store will typically be used to advertise it.The nature of the price point of the products Bartolucci is promoting has moved the company into more non-permanent materials, primarily corrugated. Occasionally a vacuum-formed unit or an acrylic display will be created, but the lower cost of corrugated makes it the vehicle of choice for Paper Mate."Years ago, when we had products at a higher price point, we could justify acrylic displays or vacuum-formed units. They tended to hold about two dozen higher priced products and were more of a product glorifier than a merchandiser," Bartolucci says. "For the Paper Mate franchise now, it's probably 95 percent non-permanent displays and 5 percent permanent."Bartolucci says the Stationery Products Group has recently begun to try some cross-franchise similarity with its displays. For instance, if Parker has a display vehicle that works well for them, the company may try to utilize it with Liquid Paper and Paper Mate. "We're developing a Stationery Products Group identity," he says. "It will probably be an evolutionary process that takes place."How long does it take?There are two timetables for developing displays. There is the normal, established back-to-school timetable that involves primary packaging such as blister cards and pouches, and the creation of corresponding displays. "In May 1995, all of the primary packaging requirements for back-to-school 1996 had to be written. This is driven by customers' needs and a need for sales samples. By August 1995, the sales samples had to be assembled as packaged products," Bartolucci explains.The plan for the remainder of the year is executed as needed to meet the demands of sales meetings, presentations and trade shows. "We build up for the back-to-school crunch literally starting on Jan. 1 and continuing through June 15," he says.The other timetable is a fast track program that is called Business Building Opportunities (BBOs). These are account-specific packages and display vehicles that won't be in demand until January or February when building for the current selling season is already well under way. There is a "SWAT team" called the BBO Task Force that represents all functions: sales, marketing, distribution, purchasing, creative and engineering. The group convenes weekly throughout the year to manage the demanding schedules and get special displays out the door in a timely manner. "Some of our accounts just don't want to buy from the catalog. That's understandable in this account-specific age. We've had to develop the ability to turn around special orders," Bartolucci says.The development of excellent displays and packaging is crucial to generate profitable back-to-school sales, but it is also of utmost importance because they are the primary movers of the product: historically, these type of products are not widely advertised in the media.Bartolucci estimates that Paper Mate generates up to 10,000 floorstands, 25,000 power wings, and 150,000 individual counter units annually. The '95 catalog offers displays with a strong brand presence and multi-colored printing that puts them at the higher end of temporary displays, he says.Trends on the horizon"One of the next trends that I think we're going to see in the stationery products side of the business is category management," according to Bartolucci. "You've seen it in cosmetics and pantyhose. Entire segments of aisles have been taken over by a key brand marketer. They define the region for the entire group. We haven't seen that yet in the stationery product side, but I can very easily see a company like Gillette with a Paper Mate Stationery Products Center that also allows room for competitors' brands."Bartolucci says Paper Mate has talked about it and he's heard it mentioned in sales meetings, but not in terms of what he would see as a point-of-purchase vehicle. "I see it as an opportunity for a display vehicle like you would see in the supermarket, like a fresh pasta merchandiser. The writing instrument side/stationery products side has such an abundance of product. There is nothing out there that helps the consumer wade through all this stuff, and to me that's where the whole industry needs to be."

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