Strategy Components
To achieve the strategy we rethought the well known categories and created solutions parallel to household needs. The following groups evolved:
- Household Complements: To offer solutions for each segment of the home — The living room, the kitchen, the dining room, the bathroom, the closets, the backyard and the laundry room.
- Household Support: To offer solutions to the areas of the home such as lighting, ventilation, painting, blinds and small repairs.
- Seasonal Solutions: A theme was created in each store for Christmas, Easter, Halloween and Mardi Gras along with the solutions for each season.
We rethought the groupings and their definitions as well as the products that we would like to carry. We wanted to be specialized in the level of stock offered and very selective in choosing each article. Everything had to represent exclusivity, good taste and innovation to meet the expectation of our guests.
Parallel to the Solutions re-design, the store was designed to offer a warm and friendly environment that imitated an actual home. We created “Solution Worlds” in which you could enter into “your” living room, “your” dining room, etc. Sales consultant’s had more formal attire to further the image of host and hostess in a home while assisting guests. To reflect the home in a community we designed the traffic flow in the store with a “ring road” or bypass on the periphery of the store floor, a diagonal street, streets and alley ways to make it easy for our guests to navigate and find their solutions. The metallic shelves were replaced with beautiful wooden furnishings for the exhibition of the solutions. In addition, a lighting analysis was done to create a warm environment and highlight our home mart home. Good taste was to be found in every corner of the store.
The Geese Pack, flying in formation, created a new culture. People’s strengths were highlighted and positive feedback exchanged. The new North gave us room to fall in love with home mart. Every member of the company knew the meaning of a clean parking lot and thousands of details were identified by the team over the course of several months for everyone’s benefit, including our guests. Our special events, called The Evening for the Stars, began to take shape. Etiquette and cooking classes were offered and during the holidays the store came alive with the Christmas tree decorations just as in a true home.
This different culture created a new way of thinking which can be contrasted as follows: