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Feature Article, April 2005
One-Stop Sears Shop
New stand-alone Sears Grand stores offer one-stop shopping for families and homeowners.
Susan H. Fishman
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“We knew that moving off-mall was a strategy that would allow us to get closer to our customers and make it convenient for more customers to shop us more frequently,” says Sears Grand spokesperson Lisa Gibbons.
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Sears, Roebuck and Company recently announced its plans to move away from the traditional mall store format to a new stand-alone concept that’s more convenience-driven and customer-centric. Sears Grand is what the company came up with — an extended offering of the best of what Sears is known for (appliances, lawn and garden supplies, electronics, tools, automotive products and services, sporting goods, apparel and hardware) with an innovative mix of convenience-inspired items (health and beauty products, greeting cards, dry grocery, pet food and magazines). Shoppers will also find an array of convenient services at Sears Grand, including an auto center, custom paint mixing, window blind cutting and key cutting.
In addition to expanding its retail offering, Sears decided to move off-mall with the new store to increase its number of locations.
“There are only so many malls you can go into, and we were in a lot of the malls that we wanted to be in already,” says Lisa Gibbons, spokesperson for Sears Grand. “We knew that moving off-mall was a strategy that would allow us to get closer to our customers and make it convenient for more customers to shop us more frequently.”
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Currently, there are four Sears Grand stores in Illinois, California, Utah and Nevada. Three more will open this fall in Texas, Missouri and Colorado.
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The one-level store is brightly lit with wide, uncluttered aisles and easy checkout lanes at the exit. A racetrack format combined with colorful, bilingual signage make it easy for customers to navigate the 165,000- to 210,000-square-foot stores. To add a little more convenience and fun, Sears Grand features shopping carts that have a kid-friendly racecar theme and are equipped with cup holders for mom and dad. The stores also feature a café where busy families can grab a bite to eat. The goal was to create a destination for everything related to home and family life, with the target demographic being single-family households, in some cases multicultural.
“Obviously, homeowners tend to be our sweet spot,” adds Gibbons.
The locations for the stores vary. Sears Grand so far is located in Gurnee, Illinois; Rancho Cucamonga, California; West Jordan, Utah; and Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Sears Grand targets single-family homeowners as its primary customer base.
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“Our Gurnee store is a little unusual because it’s attached to a mall,” notes Gibbons. “But it’s part of the Gurnee Mills shopping center and in a huge shopping mecca, which draws people from all over the place.”
In Rancho Cucamonga, Sears Grand has a freestanding 180,000-square-foot store at the Foothill Crossing shopping center on Creek Boulevard.
“The idea for our freestanding stores is to be part of a larger development,” says Gibbons. “They are near or part of a strip mall or center because we don’t want to be out in the middle of nowhere. Obviously, we want to be near other shopping areas.”
But the company still has no plans to grow the on-mall format.
“Because malls don’t pop up every day, it’s hard to expand or grow in that particular format,” Gibbons notes. “We view the growth opportunity in the off-mall format, but that’s not to say that the mall format is not going to change or benefit from the learnings or the merger with Kmart and some of the other things we’re looking into.”
Sears recently acquired 50 Kmart stores and six Wal-Mart stores, prior to the merger with Kmart, which will combine the two retailers into a major new retail company, named Sears Holding Corporation. Sears Holdings will be the nation’s third largest retailer, with approximately $55 billion in annual revenues, 2,350 full-line and off-mall stores, and 1,000 specialty retail stores.
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Sears Grand offers more convenience- and necessity-oriented products than a traditional Sears store.
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Between the new Sears Grand stores and the potential to convert the Kmart and Wal-Mart stores, the company will be able to increase its off-mall presence with locations across the country. Sears will take hold of the stores this spring and plans to convert them all by this fall.
“In determining if we’re going to build a new Sears Grand or we’re going to be investing in real estate that’s already in existence, it’s really going to depend on the market and the costs involved,” says Gibbons.
So far, Sears Grand has three additional locations slated for fall 2005, in Austin, Texas; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; and Thornton, Colorado. The company has yet to announce locations for 2006, but the outlook is good. So far, the stores have been very well received and are exceeding company expectations. The company has even been able to utilize some of the key learnings from Sears Grand and incorporate them into its full-line stores.
“The new Sears Grand is certainly a different mix of merchandise, so one of the major challenges was developing relationships with new vendors and getting into items and merchandise categories that Sears hasn’t been in before, like these more transactional or convenience-type items,” says Gibbons. “We’re stepping out of some of the traditional categories that we are known for, and our customers have really responded to it.”
©2005 France Publications, Inc. Duplication or reproduction of this article not permitted without authorization from France Publications, Inc. For information on reprints of this article contact Barbara Sherer at (630) 554-6054.
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