Bon Marche's Strip Tease

The Bon Marche has entered the world of the big-box strip center. The Seattle-based division of Federated Department Stores (Cincinnati) opened a freestanding single-entrance store in an open-air shopping strip in Helena, Mont.

While the store is the first of its kind for either Bon Marche or Federated, it evidently won't be the last. Bon Marche chairman Dan Edelman reports that the store likely will serve as a blueprint not only for future Bon stores in mid-size markets, but also for other Federated stores.

At 65,000 square feet, the store is smaller than Bon's traditional stores and has several new twists, including centralized checkout stands, compact shopping carts, customer call boxes and scanning devices to help customers check prices. The store will sell apparel, fragrances and home accessories, but not furniture.

Edelman noted that few mid-size cities in the Northwest are building enclosed malls anymore, opting instead for outdoor retail areas with standalone stores. To break into these markets, he said, the Bon will need to build smaller stores emphasizing customer convenience. The stores also are less expensive to build. He reported that the Helena store cost about a third less than a typical mall department store. “We had to think about how can we afford to build a store more economically so we can afford to go into these markets,” Edelman said. “And then once we're in these markets, we need to be very efficient for the customer.”

The decision was also apparently driven by competitive forces. The new format is an upscale version of the strategy followed by Kohl's, the fast-growing apparel and home-accessories retailer based in Menomonee Falls, Wis. Kohl's stores are designed to allow customers to get in and out quickly. Sears said last week it, too, would adopt a central-checkout model as part of an overhaul of its business.

“It's probably the beginning of a trend that almost every traditional retailer will at least study,” said retail trend-spotter Kurt Barnard. “The traditional department-store formula is beginning to look a little frayed around the edges.”

On the same day as the Helena opening, The Bon opened a more-traditional two-level, 87,000-square-foot store will open in the Wenatchee (Wash.) Valley Mall. The two new stores are the first the Bon has opened since 1997. The retailer — which has 44 stores in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming — plans to open new Washington State stores in Yakima next year and in Redmond in 2003.