Bon Marche>Petit Marche

Federated Department Stores (Cincinnati) will be testing a new, smaller concept when it opens its Bon Marche store in Helena, Mont., in November. The 65,000-sq.-ft. strip center store will be on one floor, with one entrance and supermarket-style checkouts.

If the Helena experiment pans out, said a Federated spokesperson, the department store retailer might employ the single-door, mass-checkout format in its other divisions. “We are testing this in a small market to see what kind of response we get,” she said. “If it works, we may introduce it in smaller filler markets around the country.”

The model has become the predominant way of handling customer flow and checkout in discount stores, large specialty stores and big-box retailers. Lately, it has become the model for the successful Kohl's department store chain.