Testing time for new marketing formats

Villager’s Hardware is the model by means of which Home Depot, whose DIY stores as a rule have a floorspace of around 12 000 m², is turning to smaller formats: the retail area of this new type of store comes to 3 500 m² plus an outdoor garden centre of 400 m². These outlets are conceived as “neighbourhood stores” and offer more than just hardware: the product mix covers over 40 000 items available in twelve departments. Customers here can find everything they need for small-scale home enhancement and maintenance projects including lighting, interior decoration and gardening articles, giftware, cupboard and storage systems as well as cleaning products and housewares.
Villager’s is Home Depot’s neighbourhood concept currently being tested.
Customer service, which enjoys a special status in this new store model, is put into practice in six different ways. In the “Center for project solutions” customers are offered help with technical questions, either from a member of staff or through books or videos. Over and above this come seminars and product demonstrations. Tools can be tried out by the customer before he actually buys them. There is a cutting service not only for piping, rope, chain or wire but for garden hoses, Velcro fastenings and Plexiglas as well. No charge is made for the computerised planning of built-in cupboards or consequently trimming the shelves to fit. Customers can ask to have large articles loaded into their cars after purchase, and to solve every minor transport problem the appropriate equipment can be hired, e.g. furniture rollers or sack trucks.
Targeted by the new store format are both end-consumers and tradesmen. The particular demands of trade customers are met through the provision of a separate area with its own entrance where service is provided by a specialist team.
This new store model is still at the trial stage in New Jersey. Of the four stores announced in 1998, three have now been realised – the stores in Brunswick and Garwood opened in 1999, and Saddle Brook started up in the middle of this year. The opening of the fourth trial store has been announced for the beginning of next year.
“Sales at our two Villager’s Hardware stores are progressing very well and we are happy that the trial has met our goals in the first year,” said Robert J. Wittman, Home Depot’s Senior Vice-President for business development, during the opening ceremony for the third Villager’s store at Saddle Brook in mid-August.
With these small neighbourhood…