Fred Meyer Receives Silver LEED-certification

Fred Meyer, a large-format grocery and general merchandise retailer operated by Cincinnati-based The Kroger Co., has earned Silver-LEED certification for the remodel of a Portland, Ore., store.

Photo: Tonya Colson, Dubai, U.A.E.

Designed by MulvannyG2 Architecture, the store is the first of Kroger’s 2,500 nationwide locations to attain LEED-certification. An in-house economic analysis estimated that for every dollar spent on the remodel, $9 in energy consumption would be saved down the line. “Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of sustainable design,” said Randy Sauer, principal at MulvannyG2.

Photo: Tonya Colson, Dubai, U.A.E.

“As consumer awareness grows, we’re seeing more companies make sustainability a part of their business model. Fred Meyer’s commitment is at the forefront of this process among large-format retailers.” Fred Meyer is using this location as a testing ground for other green design projects to be implemented at future sites. Reposted from DDI Online.
Congratulations Freddies!

See related post: Northwest hypermarket makes organic products mainstream

Camilla Chalmers, Marketing Manager

Sniff dog hotel – where dogs and dog owners come to play

With Portland, Oregon being one of the dog- friendliest cities in the U.S., there is no surprise we throw an annual dog day here at Grand & Benedicts where employees bring their furry friends to work for a day. There is also no surprise to see pet shops and doggy day cares popping up all over our town. Somebody’s got to take care of our four-legged friends right?

A recent addition, with a slightly new take on dog boarding, is Sniff Dog Hotel, located on the outskirts of the trendy Northwest Portland.  Sniff, I realized, is more than just a boarding place for dogs. Sniff’s co-owner, Corey Murry, admits their goal is to unite Portland’s tight knit dog community and create a place for dogs and dog owners to socialize. Take the adjoining Sniff café where dog owners can stop in for a glass of wine during happy hour or indulge in what I had -a toasted ham sandwich- all while watching their dogs play.

Rather than locking up dogs in small cages, which was my misconstrued idea of doggy day cares, dogs at Sniff are encouraged to socialize. With 2,000 square feet of indoor turf available, I can envision a pretty wicked soccer game… for dogs that is.

Events ranging from Puppy Meets, Obedience Training and Singles’ Nights will also support Sniff’s community building- and maybe even enable some match making!

Leaving a loved one in the hands of a stranger can be tough decision for many dog owners. Couples without kids often see their dog as the baby in the family and command a boarding place that’s neat and clean with people who they can trust. Sniff “sniffed” out the demand for not only a place where dogs can stay, but also a place for dogs to go on vacation. Corey Murry explained that people who previously wouldn’t take their dogs to a boarding place are now starting to loosen the leach. I can see why…

Sniff is not holding back on luxuries and amenities. The Penthouse rooms are even equipped with private web cams and flat panels where dogs can watch their favorite TV show.  Bubble baths, relaxing massages and “Paw-dicures” are other offerings for spoiled pooches. Although, I can’t stop to wonder who’s the one getting spoiled here, the dog or the dog owner? 

Sounds like a pricey extravaganza? I would think so. But the truth is that leaving your dog at Sniff doesn’t make any bigger dent in your wallet than other dog boarding places in town. Woof to that!  
   

Transforming a brand…while keeping it real

To sustain brand value over time, brands create an environment for innovation; adjust the product mix to give the brand new resonance. Some companies even take the leap to transform the entire brand proposition. At least that’s what it felt like when Eddie Bauer recently launched the First Ascent line and transitioned from casual wear into the segment of outdoor apparel and mountaineering gear.  Being in my thirties and passionate about climbing, I realized I was their target audience, but to my knowledge- only living in the U.S. for 10 years, Eddie Bauer had no associations with conquering mountains. This is going to be an interesting brand innovation to follow.

It didn’t take long before my first First Ascent catalog arrived in the mail – they found me! But the questioned remained; will they find the way to my heart? Changing old brand perceptions doesn’t happen overnight. Many climbers have deep rooted loyalty in brands like Patagonia that truly live and breathe the outdoor life. How can a casual wear company break into technical outdoor apparel and hardcore expedition gear – and succeed? This could be a grueling mountain to climb. Paging through my first Eddie Bauer catalog was a pleasant surprise but their referral to Mt. Rainier, Washington as the birthplace for the First Ascent gear sounded like a marketing pitch. Is this for real? With disbelief, I set out to find out: Who’s Eddie Bauer?

Apparently, Eddie Bauer was a real person, born and raised in the state of Washington. Eddie produced the first patented down jacket “Skyliner” in 1940 and outfitted the first Americans to climb Mt. Everest. Clearly, Eddie Bauer’s brand innovation isn’t their “first ascent” into the outdoor world, but rather brings them back to their heritage. After watching this video on Outside Television, I also learned Eddie Bauer’s renewed spirit for the outdoors spans across the entire organization – inside and out. To get the right people onboard they created an environment that attracts employees with a passion for the outdoors- from employee hiking clubs to promoting an active lifestyle. Employees are encouraged to work half-days to go out and play, and are offered a “get active” reimbursement program to pay for gear and outdoor activities.

In Nicholas Ind’s book “Living the brand”, brands come to life when the boundaries between the internal and external blur and companies literally live the brand values. Consumers expect brands to be what they say they are and keeping it real. Thus far, I believe the First Ascent line made an authentic first appearance and has started its climb to triumph.

Camilla Chalmers, Marketing Manager

Employees vs. customers first?

You probably heard the saying “the customer is always right” and some of you may already practice it in your line of work. While I don’t disagree with a customer centric management style, the approach companies take to achieve “first class customer service” can be controversial. How do you win the heart of customers and keep them coming back for more?

A company that does things a little differently is Southwest Airlines. Lindsay Reynolds, an Emerging Media Specialist at Southwest Airlines shared the company’s mantra at the eMarketing summit here in Portland. “Employees first, customers second and shareholders third”. How can they put customers second? Isn’t it the customer who should be thanked for staying in biz, not to mention that paycheck every month?

Lindsay’s explanation was if employees are happy they will provide great service and hence make customers happy. It’s pretty simple…and it worked. Employees at Southwest love their jobs and their customer service ratings follow. Who hasn’t noticed their staff’s unique (or quirky) personality when flying in their memorable red and purple airplanes and employees keep on getting more creative in demonstrating their happiness. Maybe you remember seeing their goofy rapping flight attendant who rapped the safety announcement before take-off. In most companies this act would be completely out of line, at Southwest they saw it as an opportunity to express their “FUNluving” attitude.

An example of how Southwest Airlines truly puts their employees first is through their “Operation Pigtail” employee awards program. Every time someone gets nominated for a job well done, they get a pig tail. By the end of the year, they draw twenty pigtails/names out of the hat and each winner gets a check of $10,000.

Being a service company like Southwest the staff is more or less their product, but even a retailer ought to benefit from happy, giving employees. Having sales associates who are passionate, motivated and enthusiastic to help customers can be pivotal to shopper satisfaction.

Before you take it to the level of Southwest airlines and announce “Employees first”, or give away $200,000 in employee awards there are many small steps you can take to make employees feel special.  And food for thought, if your employees are not happy the “customer is always right” approach may not deliver the results you were hoping for.

Camilla Chalmers, Marketing Manager

The Free Way to Sales

Free 30-day trial!…Free initial consultation!…Buy one get on free!…Where ever you go it’s hard to miss all free trial offers that are flashing at shoppers nowadays. Companies are literally begging people to “test drive” their products and services. While the motives of these seemingly generous offers are to sell, “FREE” can be the magic word to acquire a new customer.

To build trust in merchandise (or notice them in the first place), retailers entice shoppers to sample products and experience them firsthand. How many times have you fallen for those cookies you sampled in the bakery aisle? After you brought the cookies home they never tasted the same- strangely, “free” tastes so much better. Still, shoppers continue to fall for free trials and can go from “lukewarm” to “can’t live without it” by simply getting the opportunity to sample it; applying that bareMinerals make up, test riding the E l e c t r a cruiser and demoing the new Wii game that just came out.

While many retailers do everything under the sun to make shoppers experience their products, like the Adrenalina store in Florida that built a simulated wave indoor surf pool, my experience is that some stores only make it harder. A study from the book Why We Buy (Simon & Schuster 2009) discovered that women who take jeans into fitting rooms are 25% likely to buy something and men, 65%. With the high likelihood of generating a sale in the fitting room, it’s surprising to see many apparel retailers limiting the number of items you can bring with you –and more over- they keep their fitting rooms locked! While shrinkage is a big problem for many retailers, the sales opportunities can be shrinking themselves – hunting down an employee to try something on is too much work for some shoppers. When the shopper is in the fitting room they are in a “buying mode”, some even on a mission! Why not take advantage?

Needless to say all stores are unique. Some stores carry high ticket merchandise that demand higher security and some serve demographics and locations with higher theft rate, but at what point does increased sales from making it easy for shoppers to try something on outweigh shrinkage?

Camilla Chalmers, Marketing Manager

The Beauty of Getting Personal

Buying makeup scares me. Sitting in a tall stool in the middle of customer traffic makes me feel like a human aisle interrupt. Plus, I’m afraid I’ll end up looking like a Cirque du Soleil performer because that look is “in.” Experimenting with products in a drug store is about as personal as self-service at a gas station.

When I heard about a new full-service cosmetics and skincare store in Portland, Oregon, I was a little hesitant about getting a makeover. I was expecting another impersonal experience with haute makeup. Instead, it was all about me, me, me! Well, it’s about time somebody made a personal thing personal.

Blush bustles with expert make up and aesthetician artists who have a lot of fun transforming people. My makeup artist wanted to know every detail about how I approach makeup (with caution tape) and what I needed (nighttime and daytime). Not once did she make me feel like the cosmetically-challenged person that I am. Everything was custom-selected just for me from multiple cosmetic lines. So I emerged with two different looks: one for going on stage (I’m a stand up comedian at night) and one for everyday (writer and mother of two). I walked out of the store holding an illustration of where all the makeup goes – kind of like paint-by-numbers. One makeover later, I’ve transformed from a cosmetiphobe to hooked on cosmetics.

Five months later, I went back to Blush and almost fell over because they didn’t just remember me, they asked how my comedy show went. The one I performed in five months ago. How do they remember? That happened three more times. Okay, they use hidden cameras or something. Then, my friends told me they had the same experience. I was so impressed, I asked the owner, Deborah Haynes, how her staff remembers those details when I can’t even remember my phone number. “Beauty is about you and what will fit your lifestyle. We ask a lot of questions,” she said, laughing at my hidden camera comment. “We take memory pills.” Well, they’re probably minty fresh. They also sell mints for your purse, you know.

The important thing is at Blush, they make me feel like a star. Add incentive cards (Earn free brow and was services with “High Brow” and “Lip Service” cards.), a wildly fun shopping experience (Products sporting “Play with me” stickers just dare you to experiment.) and you’re hooked. It’s like a candy store for grown up girls, and I can’t wait to go back. All that getting personal must work. Blush is doubling their square footage in May, which will no doubt thrill loyal followers like me. More stuff and more room to get personal.

www.blushbeautybar247.com

Jacki, Marketing Strategist

Giving new life to old fixtures

Things were looking a little bleak in our Milwaukie Warehouse office. We were in desperate need of a makeover. Unlike the shiny corporate headquarters, this office is where we get down and dirty – assembling custom fixture programs that we warehouse and ship to retailers across the country. Through the use of some unused fixture prototypes and some new paint, we turned the front office and will call area into a friendly place to do business.

Somebody asked if our desks are always this clean? I wish. To tell you the truth, we just put all the paperwork in our desktop drawer for the pictures.  The story behind the new look is that we had some prototypes sitting above the shop collecting dust and not being used. So we used the prototypes and, after applying some new paint, we made the office into the show piece it is now.  It is a lot easier on the eyes now and when our customers walk in the front door they are greeted with a clean, professional looking work area. At the same time, we are marketing our products. Everything we used is either an item we sell or fixture that our design team created.

If you look closer at the wall unit we made for Aerosoles, you can see how it turned into a miniature Civil War game (the annual college football game in Oregon between the Oregon State Beavers and the Oregon Ducks).  You have the boss’s flamboyant duck memorabilia on one side of the shelf and the small, but efficient, Oregon State sign on the other side (Duck fans are relentless in this company.)

The Zumiez sunglass case has turned into our trophy case. We convinced the guys in the warehouse to bring in the awards they have won from our employee awards program, the G&B Benny Award, and they filled up the case.  We only have room for one more award. We are going to need a bigger showcase!  To add the finishing touches, we put up some old G&B signs that were going to be thrown away. We like the changes and now are attacking the never-ending war against warehouse dust!

Josh Stover
Assistant Warehouse Manager, Milwaukie Warehouse

Losing weight without losing what matters most

Infusing humor into your daily life has to be one of the best ways to stay healthy. Riding bicycles, walking the dog or spending time with family and friends provide endless of opportunities for a good laugh, but how many of these opportunities does one get in an office setting? Many of us have probably experienced the despised “all work and no play” syndrome.

Luckily, this is not the case at Grand & Benedicts.  We have a long history of lighthearted antics. This is especially true when it comes to our passions, which usually involves some form of competition- from Texas Hold’em poker nights to an all-you-can-do Pull-Up Contest. While the last one took its toll, and left some of us sore for 4 days, it hasn’t stopped our game craze.

Last year, a group of G&B employees placed an informal weight loss bet. As much as this sound like an episode from the TV show “The Office”, the bet was a HUGE success; even the person who took last place lost a whopping 10 lbs! A year later, this spurred the idea to throw a fun and casual company weight loss contest. Who can lose the highest percentage of weight in 3 months?

Losing weight doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, and let me tell you- it isn’t! But stir some competition into the pot and it immediately spices things up. Add some hot prizes (like the possibility of winning $700 in prize money) and the chase is on. Since the countdown started about 4 weeks ago, our employee workout room turned into a second home (for some of us) and weight loss tips are literally firing across the office. Some employees are so dedicated (or desperate to win) they turned to iPhones new Lose it! app for help. A more “Xtreme” group of employees discovered muscle burning P90X drills.

iPhone's Lose it! App. (left), P90X (right)

I can’t tell you how successful our weight loss results are until the numbers come in, but what I can tell you is that we, once again, succeeded at “high value” office entertainment!

Camilla Chalmers

Behind the scenes of a Portland bike shop

Hi! I’m David Guettler, founder of River City Bicycles  in Portland, OR. This next March we will be celebrating our 15^th year in the retail bicycle business. We are a large single location, owner-managed store, centrally located near downtown Portland.

From what I learned opening and running a wide range of retail stores I have learned what worked and what didn’t- for me at least. Personally, I prefer simple ways of doing business. For instance, we do not have a point-of-sale system. I believe we do not need it. To me the bottom line is always the bottom line- will it make us more money than it costs us? Do not assume that computers always do.

This might sound like a given, but in order to stay in business; the profitability must be factored into the budget. Making money is why we’re here, right? I make sure all employees understand that we are NOT a non-profit organization.

One of my favorite parts of running a business is the advertising. To me, it is a golden opportunity to communicate with people and convey our business message. We designed a campaign to promote cycling in general, along with promoting River City. We balance that with also sponsoring and promoting enthusiast and racing events, since this reaches the mavens (people considered as experts to all of their friends). Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

One of the most difficult aspects of running a business that is considered ‘seasonal’ is keeping staff intact through the slow part of the year. Do you reinvest profits to expand or carry strong staff “the keepers” through the slow season? The goal is to start the next season stronger- whatever it takes.

The other issue that always comes up is the greed factor. While there is always an element of greed involved, I have seen it seriously limit the success of a business. My ex-business partner had a business policy of ‘I win, you lose, or I’m not doing business with you’. So eventually, no one did business with him, and he floundered. Mutually beneficial business relationships can be the way to get your business to that ‘big picture’ place.

I am not saying that my methods would work for everyone- frankly, I don’t know if they would work for anyone else. But I do know they have worked very well for me, and as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

David Guettler, Founder of River City Bicycles

How to lose a design contest…(and still come out as a winner)

An action sport eyewear brand specializing in sunglasses for skate/surf and snow boarders, invited Grand & Benedicts to participate in a design competition for eyewear displays. Never stepping down to a challenge, we were thrilled to exploit our creative minds and compete against some of the country’s top design firms. Bring ‘em on! Among several design parameters given to us, the one we ended up following most closely was “thinking outside the box”…and let me tell you why.

Our youthful, British designer, Michael, was given the task. With an eye for details, I’m convinced he sees life through a different lens, but as a former bike designer, he combines it with simplicity. It’s evident Michael enjoys incorporating used parts into his designs. One time he turned a PBR beer can into an aroma therapy candle and another time he converted a grocery store shopping basket into a bike basket for his wife’s cruiser. Still, Michael has a serious side. Being schooled at Pasadena College of Art and teaching part time at the Portland Art Institute, he has a reputation for setting the bar high. Shoot for the stars or else!

Full of enthusiasm for this design contest, Michael, literally overflowing with creativity, came up with some nifty and even thrifty ideas. Michael started hitting up thrift stores where he stuffed his Chrome backpack full of teddy bears. Back at the office, Michael started chopping them up into pieces. Go at it Michael!

Before we knew it, Michael had turned the teddy bears into monsters and monkeys (with some sewing help from our receptionist). Where Michael got this “off-the-wall” idea from will remain a mystery but his displays totally worked! At the end of the day we didn’t win the design contest but we had fun while it lasted. Next time we might think twice before we monkey around or turn fixtures into monsters, but who knows where these displays will end up. Sometimes the best ideas come out of mistakes.

Camilla Chalmers, Marketing Manager