Sears Hometown Refresh Sparks Sales

Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores, which spun off from Sears Holdings in 2012, has undertaken a store-by-store merchandising refresh that by the end of 2017 will encompass 674 locations — 79% of the total.The store overhaul, which started in 2014, has centered on new signage and other branding dubbing these stores “America’s Appliance Experts.” The initiative so far appears to be addressing the goals that Sears Hometown had at the outset: Total comparable sales in 2016 at stores with the rebranding was 3% higher than those without, while home appliance sales were 6% higher.Prior to launch, Sears Hometown hired Sprosty Network, Eden Prairie, MN, to conduct shopper research to find gaps in the marketplace that the chain could fill. The effort ended up focusing on a new approach to selling appliances in rural areas, and the research revealed changes in how consumers wanted to learn about products and shop the category.After piloting the overhaul in DeKalb, IL, in December 2014, Sears Hometown converted 180 stores in 2015, another 290 last year and will do 204 more in 2017. They might do more in 2018, although there are “no official plans,” says Mike McCarthy, Sears Hometown’s chief merchandising officer and vice president of merchandising and inventory.To drive shoppers into these new stores, Sears Hometown launched its own transactional website separate from the former parent company’s at sears.com, which the Hometown stores had relied upon for many years, says John Sessoms, divisional vice president of merchandising at the retailer. They’re driving traffic to the new site with print and online ads, and they have set it up to be geo-targeted to a shopper’s local store.“You’re shopping the local store. We target the ZIP codes that surround that store,” he says. “It shows a map to our locations and shows stores with inventory of the specific products customers are searching for. A local store will pop up and say, ‘We have that product.’ But the customer also has access to an extended online inventory not available at that store.”Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores make heavy use of social media, especially Facebook, to publicize activities within individual stores, which are operated on a dealership model and are mostly 5,000 to 6,000 square feet, McCarthy says. “The owners of these stores are generally visible and well known in the community,” he says.The Sears Hometown conversions focus on the America’s Appliance Experts signage (designed by Artisan Complete, Markham, Ontario, Canada) ranging from exterior window clings to shelf danglers. But the changes also included redesigned store flow, item-level signage that contains less text and relies more on icons to educate the consumer, a wider assortment of national brands beyond the Kenmore brand, and “innovation stations” at the front of the stores that provide callouts for particularly innovative products, McCarthy says.“There’s a number of ‘vignettes’ that bring suites of appliances together, so the customer can see them in one setting and visualize how they might look in their home,” he says. “We found out customers in the home appliance segment prefer to shop by brand more than any other category,” a finding that led to the redesigned flow that prioritized brand-by-brand assortments.Sears Hometown also rethought associates’ selling strategies. Associates were trained to:first relate to the customer to engage and build credibility with them,discover and understand their needs and brand preferences,and finally support them by aligning product features with what the customer currently needs and will require in the future.In addition to the higher home appliance and overall sales, statistics from 2016 include 93.9% customer satisfaction in stores that have been converted, a $21.33 higher average customer sales ticket, 0.8% higher rate of customers agreeing to protection agreements for their appliances, and a 3% higher share of customers using their Sears credit card.“If we refreshed a store, we thought that might have a ‘halo effect’ on other categories like tools, or lawn and garden,” McCarthy says. “We’ll continue to look at opportunities. We open new stores every year, and any new stores we open will open as America’s Appliance Experts.”

Sears Hometown Refresh Sparks Sales

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