Spring 2020 Strategies

CUSTOMER PROFILE

Product Selection Strategies When it came to choosing the departments the Stauffers wanted to have in the store, Blish-Mize helped them customize to fit their needs. Janet even worked with some of the vendors that are not a part of the Blish-Mize warehouse to make sure everyone had the space they needed. “Janet let us pick and choose what we needed, but gave us overall direction for how to lay out the store,” says John. “She even recommended some new categories I wasn’t too sure about at first, but have turned out to be good sellers.” Before the new building was set to open, John and Carla traveled to the Blish-Mize buying market to source some

“Janet and Clay designed our store to encourage more women to come in and shop,” says Carla. “We’re seeing a lot more of those shoppers now than we ever did before. Janet also arranged the departments to help with traffic flow of customers through the building.” New interior signage and an emphasis on creative merchandising has helped encourage more consumer shoppers. The Stauffers expanded the store hours to seven days a week and made some deliberate changes to their product mix to broaden their reach. In plumbing and electrical, for example, they now have space to display fixtures out of the box, which helps show the wide selection they offer and makes the category more consumer friendly. NFL-branded tailgating gear, grills, bird feeders and hunting supplies are among the new categories John never would have thought to sell before, but they’ve been popular with customers.

new assortments, such as new paint and flooring vendors. With a larger store, the Stauffers also added shopping carts, and they’ve become indicative of the way shopping habits are changing at Tanco. Before building the new store, John says he could only provide a portion of the project—the lumber and a few add-on items. Now, he can provide nearly everything on the shopping list. Customers can fill up their shopping cart with the full project. While the new building has only been open a few months, traffic count has increased dramatically, and John expects to see a large jump in the average transaction size.

“Blish-Mize has always been fair and their service is great. They care about us as people.” —John Stauffer, owner

Hardlines Strategies • Spring 2020 32