Express fashion store

Home Express: A Real Crowd Pleaser

Carrying the same merchandise as most discount and department stores, Home Express' innovative approach to home accessories has allowed the company to successfully compete head to head with area retailers.

By Michael Hartnett

It wasn't so long ago that retailers would go out of their way to visit the then-new Crate & Barrel concept when attending a show in Chicago. Now, when retailers visit Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area they can't keep up to date on the latest trends in the stylish presentation of home furnishings, housewares, leisure furniture and consumer electronics, without taking an hour to walk through a Home Express store.

The six existing stores resist easy definition because they have taken such a strong position in several merchandise categories -- home textiles, housewares, tabletop, consumer electronics, ready-to-assemble and leisure furniture, and much more.

Home Express describes itself as a "retail home accessories store," but that hardly does justice to this innovative concept.

Clearly, it is the ability of Home Express to deliver a winning combination of low prices, solid assortment and personal service in a shopping environment that is distinctive, exciting and fun, that sets it apart from the crowd.

Merchandise displays put heavy emphasis on bright seasonal colors. It's spring selection features aqua, shocking pink, turquoise and orange, along with the high-tech look of black and white in both furniture and soft goods, and some striking gold and silver table settings. Displays of towels, comforters and tabletop are positioned for impact at angles guaranteed to be eye catching without sacrificing the feeling of spaciousness.

About 25 percent of store space is allocated to bed and bath, 30 percent to housewares and tabletop, 18 percent to consumer electronics, and the rest is split between RTA and an "organization" department centered around kitchen needs.

In the chain's prototype store, in Buena Park, California, just outside Los Angeles, which was built to the chain's specifications, practically all the merchandise in the 50,000-square-foot selling area can be seen from the store's entry.

The store achieves this high visibility despite the use of hitech, black grids suspended from the ceiling. Similarly, most fixtures at store level are also black, with the result that virtually all colors of merchandise are accented. Even basic, white pillows are made to seem more interesting because of the contrast.

Store interiors feature terra-cotta floors, granite checkout counters and black and turquoise shopping carts.

And the store front is just as interesting. Compared to other retail operations in the typical strip mall setting preferred by Home Express, it's outside signage is colorful and distinctive.

The brands are roughly the same as those carried by mass merchants and department stores -- Cannon, Pepperell, Braun, Bush, O'Sullivan, Croscill, Stevens, Rubbermaid, Black & Decker, Sharp, Sony and ClosetMaid to name a few. On certain items, prices are as sharp as nearby K mart and Target stores, yet store design and display are as interesting and well-thought-out as Mervyn's and The Broadway.

The upscale presentation and low price strategy create the impression that the chain is working with more stringent margin requirements than other retailers who have opted for discount prices or department store presentation, but Home Express president and chief executive officer Gary Foss, denies it. He claims that every retailer operates within highly structured margin requirements but says Home Express' retail formula is not more stringent than competitors.

Rather than have long counter runs of merchandise throughout the store, Home Express uses smaller focus areas and vignettes that highlight groups of coordinated products and their uses. The store is packed with merchandise, but these focus areas create shopper interest and prove Home Express is willing to be different.

A special section in the cookware area, for example, offers a collection of cookware, utensils and some food items arranged by food speciality. In six-foot displays, shoppers can browse through the merchandise they will need for cooking Cajun style, pizza and pasta, Mexican food and Chinese.

Home Express has created categories other stores don't have yet. The "Comfort Clinic" has the same merchandise that can be found throughout most mass merchants -- shower massagers, whirlpool baths, foot spas and humidifiers -- but this chain has pulled together all this merchandise in one department. The highlight of this section is two reclining easy chairs that offer a powerful back massage.

Another specialty department is called the "Kids Corner." It, too, features familiar merchandise like plush, bedding and children's clocks, yet it has been pulled together into a kind of boutique emphasizing Walt Disney licenses, and is a magnet for youngsters shopping with mom and dad.

In the rear of the store, where consumer electronics products have been arranged into, first a television wall with heavy emphasis on big screen models, then a separate audio department. There is also a separate, free-standing room that has been installed to house a top-of-the-line video/audio system priced up near $5,000.

For the shopper who would like to muse about the fun of owning such a state-of-the-art system, Home Express has put a comfortable couch in this room and provides visitors with a remote control to sample all the features.

Heavy cross-merchandising strategies are most apparent in the home office category, a category enjoying explosive growth in Home Express. Presented with coordinated desks, chairs, file cabinets and office lighting are consumer electronics products like typewriters, telephones, copiers and fax machines. Another, smaller area adopts an approach utilized by Sharper Image with a series of unusual consumer electronics and adult games.

Home Express' low price strategy is crucial to the stores' concept, yet top management has apparently decided no to hit shoppers over the head with a low price message. Unobstrusive green signage invites comparisons between Home Express prices and "theirs," which means almost everyone else in each store's market area.

Store managers check ads by Mervyn's, The Broadway, Sears, J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, Circuit City, Target and K mart, among others, on a daily basis.

In addition, each of these stores is shopped on a regular basis to determine their everyday prices on the same merchandise carried by Home Express. The "theirs" price is seldom more than a few weeks old and Home Express tries to make certain it is always higher, sometimes just 10 percent to 15 percent higher, and at other times, more than double on selected items.

In bath towels, for example, Gentry Velour towels by J.P. Stevens are priced at $7, Magnificence by Jaime carried an $8 price point, Elegance bath towels by Cannon, $9.50 and Westpoint Pepperell terry bath towels are priced at $10.

In sheets, (twin sized) Westpoint Pepperell cotton sheets are $10; Colorama percale sheets by Springs, $5; Luxury Percale by Cannon, $8; 180-thread count percale sheets were priced at $5 and $10 for Cannon; $7 for Stevens and $5 for Spring Mills.

In comforters, the opening price point is $35, for a Fashion Home twin comforter. The highest price point was a Dakotah appliqued comforter (full size) priced at $140.

Home Express reinforces the low price/high value message using stylish presentation, bright colors and the result is an exciting and interesting shopping environment in which prices don't get in the way impulse purchases.

Home Express has apparently been able to attract several Mervyn's buyers to its staff and has benefited from their upscale flair for merchandise and presentation. Several in-store staffers left Target to bring their disciplined, system-oriented ways to Home Express.

"Our typical customer isn't that different from everyone else's. We are interested in the person whose domicile is important to them, someone in the acquisitive stage, the 25 to 54 age group," explained Foss. "They want the better quality, the updated looks. They may not want the avant-garde look but the right amount of fashion is important to them. We are into studies of psychographics as much as demographics."

All these fashion statements, combined with low prices and a margin structure not much higher than discount chains has created the need for volume sales.

Home Express has apparently been able to take some of the pressure off its home furnishings and housewares departments by generating much of the needed volume from its consumer electronics departments.

Although nearly half the stores' total volume comes from consumer electronics, 80 percent of the selling space is dedicated to the home furnishings, housewares and home office categories.