March/April 2008
Location, Location Location
The mantra for the real estate business applies to uniform retailers, too, but the real trick is to get all sales channels working in concert.
By Jay Gordon and Mary Beth Swayne
 When Quartermaster, Inc. opened the doors of a new retail store in Santa Ana, CA back in December, it instantly made the uniform supplier a more viable option for more than 2,000 officers of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
“In this space, if you have any opportunity to pick up new [public safety and law enforcement] agencies, they will require a retail store,” says Sterling Peloso, Quartermaster President and CEO. “We literally could not have bid on or serviced that contract without a retail location in Orange County.”
Like many other uniform suppliers, Quartermaster is a multi-channel manufacturer and distributor – it sends out millions of catalogs each year, but also sells through its Web site and a direct sales force. Peloso says the goal is to get all those channels to work together for the customer’s benefit.
“We’re trying to provide the ultimate customer experience,” he says. “Customers may want to look at an item online, then shoot down to one of the stores so they can touch it and feel it and talk to a real person about it. People have different purchasing habits, and we have to provide a convenience factor.”
Overall, Peloso is pleased with the balance in its sales channels; the Web site accounts for 20% of sales, catalogs and retail each bring in another 25%, and the sales force, which handles larger customers, accounts for the other 30%. “The mix seems about right,” says Peloso, who spent 11 years with Aramark before coming to Quartermaster, “and I’m happy not to be skewed toward any one channel. But we can enhance every one of those areas.”
A new location has enabled Brodskys to expand into new product lines, such as personal safety items. “More like a Gap”
The new Orange County store, Quartermaster’s fourth, is certainly doing its part to enhance the customer experience. It features oversized dressing rooms, hardwood floors, an expanded selection of 5.11 Tactical gear and on-site tailoring, embroidery and engraving services.
“We surveyed the industry and found that the retail experience is usually pretty horrible,” he says. “It’s almost like you’re going to a bait and tackle shop. There are a lot of people selling 5.11 products, but at our stores it’s all about the retail experience; they’re almost like a Gap, or a Structure store.
Quartermaster plans to open at least two more stores in the next two years, but Peloso predicts the Cerritos, CA-based company will exceed that target and could double its store count within that time frame. The company had hired a consultant to help it identify the top 10 markets in which it did not have a retail presence; Las Vegas was at the top of the list (Quartermaster opened a store there last year) and Orange County was number two. Other markets the company is looking at now include the San Francisco Bay area, Phoenix and points further east.
“If our experience is superior, we can ask for a higher price,” Peloso says. “Initially this company was built on price, but if you’re really multi-channel, you can’t play the price game for too long. We like being big enough to serve anyone in the country, but nimble enough to provide some of the personalized services that make customers want to keep coming back.”
When location is everything
A new location has enabled Brodskys to expand into new product lines, such as personal safety items.
Location isn’t just important to retailers of public safety and law enforcement uniforms. Just ask Eddie Robinson.
Robinson, owner of Scrub Shop, Inc., realized how important location was before his business even got off the ground. After managing a medical uniforms store in Texas, Robinson and his wife moved to Lafayette, IN – a city blooming with medical facilities, and two new hospitals on the way. “The biggest question I had was why there was no uniform shop here already,” Robinson says. “How could a city this large that has hospitals, dental offices and veterinary offices not have a medical uniform shop?”
The answer? There had been a very successful uniform shop in the heart of Lafayette – but the owner had fallen sick and no one had picked up the slack. When Robinson learned that the absence of a uniform store wasn’t for lack of customers, he waited for the right opportunity and the perfect location. “That was this biggest key for me,” Robinson says. “I just wanted the right location with room to allow myself to grow.”
His store is so close to the hospitals in town that “people come from work on lunch breaks,” Robinson says. “We’re in a familiar area. When it’s right down the road from where they work, they don’t necessarily have to find me; they know where I’m at.”
Jerry Jaffe’s company, Brodsky’s Uniforms, was well known for police and postal uniforms when it recently moved to a new location in Tacoma, WA. “We were in downtown Tacoma for 50 years,” Jaffe says. “Being in a downtown location, parking was at a premium. People don’t like walking long distances, especially at night.
The new location has plenty of parking. “We’ve already seen more people walking in,” Jaffe says. “We’ve had people walking in just to say, ‘We’ve always know you were in town but never knew what you guys did.’”
Location has enabled both businesses to expand into new markets and product categories. “I plan to expand my inventory with personal safety items like pepper spray,” Jaffe says. “It’s something people have been stopping and asking for.” The new location is also giving Brodsky’s a chance to go into medical uniforms because of the hospitals only a few minutes away.
Robinson is also planning to add new lines to respond to requests from customers. “I’ve had people coming in left and right, asking for shoes, stethoscopes and other supplies,” Robinson says. “I see that there’s a demand, so I’m definitely going to carry it.”
Both companies are pleased with the way their businesses are growing in their new locations. “I can’t think of any negatives about the move,” Jaffe says. “It’s something we’ve needed to do for a while and the opportunity was there.”
“I wouldn’t change anything,” Robinson says. “I’ve truly been blessed. When I was 10 I told my parents I was going to own my own business and here I am. I’m loving what I’m doing and wouldn’t change a thing.”
Enhancing the web experience, too
Opening the doors to a shiny new store is a big event for a uniforms retailer, but taking the wraps off a shiny new web site can be a huge boost for business, too. By early spring, Quartermaster will have re-launched a new and improved web site that promises to enhance the customer experience online as well.
“Our web site provides an average experience now,” says Quartermaster president and CEO Sterling Peloso. “It’s more like a glorified order form. If you know what you want, it’s OK. But if you want to shop, it’s not as great.”
He turned Quartermaster’s web development group loose to benchmark other apparel retailers, like Land’s End, “to see what we wanted our user experience to look like,” he says. “We asked customers what they wanted in terms of searchability, products and community.”
While he expects the revamped web site to offer customers lots more product choices in key product lines, developing community among those customers may offer Quartermaster the biggest bang for its web development buck. “The public safety and law enforcement markets really do build a great community,” Peloso says. “They are true professionals, and they want to share their ideas and make other people look better. We had a focus group, and we were shocked at how open they were about sharing information and ideas.”.
|
