November 7, 2006
Office Max Redesigns Business
The new interior and services at the redesigned Office Max are intended to put a little color in the shopping experience and make business people feel more comfortable parting with their dollars.
A unit in Tuscon, Ariz. will be the first in the company’s planned overhaul of all its stores. The layout has been redesigned to make the store easier to shop and a new, more colorful interior using greens, golds, oranges and blues is intended to make it warmer and more welcoming.
Julene Winterton, district manager of Office Max stores in Southern Arizona, told the Arizona Daily Star, “We want to lose the sterile, warehouse feel and give customers a fun shopping atmosphere.”
The new store has a number of features including many self-serve functions using kiosks for print and document services, as an example. The new Office Max plans to add refillable ink cartridge kiosk at some point in the future.
The new layout also attempts to simplify the shopping experience. A “technology hub” at the center of the 21,000-square-foot store showcases computers, digital cameras and other electronic tools for businesses and individuals.
The store also features a “mix it wall” where customers can grab everyday office supplies such as pens, pencils, pads and paper clips from plastic bubble-shaped bins.
“It works like penny candy,” said Ms. Winterton. “Customers come in and stuff all they want into a box.”
The new store also includes an in-store café that offers free WiFi Internet connection. Business people, students and others can come in to check their email, create documents that can be printed out in the store or just drink coffee, hang out and watch the café’s flat-screen TVs.
At least one businessperson has bought into the new Office Max. Jami Bova, an interior designer, said, “I love the colors in the store. It’s very comfortable, and it’s convenient
for me to get here. It’s a fun place to shop.”
Discussion Questions: What do you see as the state of store design and layout today? Is there real innovation taking place or do you see a pervasive
“sameness” in many projects? Where does the new Office Max fall on the scale of unique to the same old thing?
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Ever look at store design articles from retailing trade magazines 50 years ago? They say the same things OfficeMax brags about. Being colorful isn’t innovation. The cafe in the store is mildly new for the category (copying large bookstores, convenience stores, supermarkets, etc.) Here’s a question: what will the LAST retail category be to offer coffee bars? Funeral parlors? Storefront Medicaid mills?
Of course improved store design and layout can make a huge difference, and it sounds from the description of the new store format it delivers a much improved experience.
That said, three comments:
1. The question for retail initiatives like this always is: “Is it worth the cost?” especially for retrofitting existing stores. You can always make the stores more attractive, but is there an ROI from the move, especially in terms of return on invested capital?
2. In my opinion, the office products retailers would be best served by investing in people. The store level service is generally horrible for all of them, though I will say it seems to have improved in the last 12-18 months for most of them.
3. Can technology (kiosks, etc.) make up for lack of floor associates or poorly trained ones? That will be one of the key retail questions of the next decade.
Innovation, particularly for OfficeMax, would be a front-end operation that makes it quicker to check out. I shop several office supply chains in my area and I must say that OfficeMax has the slowest and most inefficient register operations.
First, they need to open up additional registers during peak periods and use department and store managers to man them rather than just standing around and looking. Everyone has a labor problem. Solve it, at least in part, by having managers fill in when needed.
Second, try training the cashiers that you have.
The importance of store design and what it contributes to the shopping experience cannot be overemphasized. All physical and sensory characteristics come into play: not just design but organization, lighting, signage, inventory display, the appearance of sales staff, sightlines, music and scent (to name just a few!).
Trends in how retailers are using music and scent were covered in a recent issue of IntegratedRetailing.com. Many leading retailers, from mass merchants and department stores to specialty and lifestyle boutiques, are savvy users of music and musical artists to enhance brands, marketing, sales and profits. Retailers such as J.C. Penney, Gap, Armani Exchange, Nordstrom, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart are signing musical artists for multi-platform campaigns that include advertising, in-store and online music sales, personal appearances and performances, and the creation of in-store musical environments that enhance the shopping experience.
As for scent, smell is an incredibly powerful marketing and merchandising too. According to the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, smell has a greater impact on purchasing decisions than all other factors combined. If something smells good, in other words, the product is perceived as good. And there is nothing like the appropriate scent to induce the brain’s neurons to scream, “I want that! Buy that now!”
A successful store redesign will increase traffic and sales if it differentiates the retail brand, enhances ambience, and elevates the shopping experience. Shoppers want to be surprised, delighted and entertained.
I’ve shopped one of these prototype stores here in Atlanta and, having spent 5 years in store design, it really is different. It’s energetic, easy to navigate and has a fun sense of whimsy. I get the sense that they are trying out new training efforts in them as well because I get amazing service every time I go there. I can’t say that they entertain me, but I don’t go to OfficeMax to be entertained…they meet my needs as a small business owner by providing a superior shopping experience and letting me boot up and check email while there.
They have done a brave thing by looking hard at their issues and taking a step to come up with a better solution. So what if some of their strategies fail? I get the sense that they will use the failures–and successes–to figure out what can be quickly retrofitted to existing stores. The big point is that they have clearly done some solid research into the consumer challenges within their stores and are experimenting with methods to rectify them.
I applaud OfficeMax, Best Buy, Apple and even Wal-Mart for simply being aware that we are going to evolve the shopping experience into the future and you have to start somewhere. Ideate, test, learn, evolve…that’s what we ALL should be doing!
I look forward to more following suit and hope that we give them a break and support the fact that they are at least trying to brave new terrain.
Wow, there’s a new idea…a cafe with internet. You are really late getting in to an idea when you are after Sears. It is the companies that dare to create and try new and different ideas that enthuse consumers and nothing that they they are trying is close to either new or different. If it is some improvement over what they had, in the short term they may get some small gain, but nothing compared to the return on investment that comes from real innovation.
Did OfficeMax start with identifying who their consumers are (end users, people looking for school supplies, small business, etc.), when they shop; their reason for shopping? It’s difficult to imagine that small business owners will be attracted by an in-store cafe. Who has time to sit down and drink coffee?
The atmosphere of the store is critical. Designing the in-store experience to be attractive to your consumers complementing their reasons for shopping is critical for success. What makes a difference to your consumers?
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Ever look at store design articles from retailing trade magazines 50 years ago? They say the same things OfficeMax brags about. Being colorful isn’t innovation. The cafe in the store is mildly new for the category (copying large bookstores, convenience stores, supermarkets, etc.) Here’s a question: what will the LAST retail category be to offer coffee bars? Funeral parlors? Storefront Medicaid mills?
Of course improved store design and layout can make a huge difference, and it sounds from the description of the new store format it delivers a much improved experience.
That said, three comments:
1. The question for retail initiatives like this always is: “Is it worth the cost?” especially for retrofitting existing stores. You can always make the stores more attractive, but is there an ROI from the move, especially in terms of return on invested capital?
2. In my opinion, the office products retailers would be best served by investing in people. The store level service is generally horrible for all of them, though I will say it seems to have improved in the last 12-18 months for most of them.
3. Can technology (kiosks, etc.) make up for lack of floor associates or poorly trained ones? That will be one of the key retail questions of the next decade.
Innovation, particularly for OfficeMax, would be a front-end operation that makes it quicker to check out. I shop several office supply chains in my area and I must say that OfficeMax has the slowest and most inefficient register operations.
First, they need to open up additional registers during peak periods and use department and store managers to man them rather than just standing around and looking. Everyone has a labor problem. Solve it, at least in part, by having managers fill in when needed.
Second, try training the cashiers that you have.
The importance of store design and what it contributes to the shopping experience cannot be overemphasized. All physical and sensory characteristics come into play: not just design but organization, lighting, signage, inventory display, the appearance of sales staff, sightlines, music and scent (to name just a few!).
Trends in how retailers are using music and scent were covered in a recent issue of IntegratedRetailing.com. Many leading retailers, from mass merchants and department stores to specialty and lifestyle boutiques, are savvy users of music and musical artists to enhance brands, marketing, sales and profits. Retailers such as J.C. Penney, Gap, Armani Exchange, Nordstrom, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart are signing musical artists for multi-platform campaigns that include advertising, in-store and online music sales, personal appearances and performances, and the creation of in-store musical environments that enhance the shopping experience.
As for scent, smell is an incredibly powerful marketing and merchandising too. According to the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, smell has a greater impact on purchasing decisions than all other factors combined. If something smells good, in other words, the product is perceived as good. And there is nothing like the appropriate scent to induce the brain’s neurons to scream, “I want that! Buy that now!”
A successful store redesign will increase traffic and sales if it differentiates the retail brand, enhances ambience, and elevates the shopping experience. Shoppers want to be surprised, delighted and entertained.
I’ve shopped one of these prototype stores here in Atlanta and, having spent 5 years in store design, it really is different. It’s energetic, easy to navigate and has a fun sense of whimsy. I get the sense that they are trying out new training efforts in them as well because I get amazing service every time I go there. I can’t say that they entertain me, but I don’t go to OfficeMax to be entertained…they meet my needs as a small business owner by providing a superior shopping experience and letting me boot up and check email while there.
They have done a brave thing by looking hard at their issues and taking a step to come up with a better solution. So what if some of their strategies fail? I get the sense that they will use the failures–and successes–to figure out what can be quickly retrofitted to existing stores. The big point is that they have clearly done some solid research into the consumer challenges within their stores and are experimenting with methods to rectify them.
I applaud OfficeMax, Best Buy, Apple and even Wal-Mart for simply being aware that we are going to evolve the shopping experience into the future and you have to start somewhere. Ideate, test, learn, evolve…that’s what we ALL should be doing!
I look forward to more following suit and hope that we give them a break and support the fact that they are at least trying to brave new terrain.
Wow, there’s a new idea…a cafe with internet. You are really late getting in to an idea when you are after Sears. It is the companies that dare to create and try new and different ideas that enthuse consumers and nothing that they they are trying is close to either new or different. If it is some improvement over what they had, in the short term they may get some small gain, but nothing compared to the return on investment that comes from real innovation.
Did OfficeMax start with identifying who their consumers are (end users, people looking for school supplies, small business, etc.), when they shop; their reason for shopping? It’s difficult to imagine that small business owners will be attracted by an in-store cafe. Who has time to sit down and drink coffee?
The atmosphere of the store is critical. Designing the in-store experience to be attractive to your consumers complementing their reasons for shopping is critical for success. What makes a difference to your consumers?