Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

The general merchandise retailer goes on a quest to modernize its image as bold, colorful and customer-centric.

By Anne DiNardo

Today’s mass merchant retail sector is full of formidable competition. There’s Target, with its emphasis on trendy, cutting-edge fashions and home decor. Wal-Mart dominates on price, especially when it comes to commodities. Kohl’s serves the market with affordably fashionable home and apparel items.

Shopko has carved out a niche in the Midwest as a place for value, focusing on apparel, home and family basics, as well as health services. (It very aggressively markets its in-store pharmacies and optical centers.)

“Whereas Target is about ‘me,’ we want Shopko to be about ‘we,’ ” says Jane Carrott-Van Auken, Shopko’s vp, store planning, design and visual merchandising. “Our customer is conservative and geared toward family.”

But much of Shopko’s differentiation was getting lost in old, outdated stores that focused more on hardlines with little fashion inspiration or emphasis on aesthetics. “Our stores were too utilitarian,” says

Carrott-Van Auken. “And we hadn’t built a new store in eight years. It had become prime time to redevelop.”

So the Green Bay, Wis.-based company turned to design firm Chute Gerdeman (Columbus, Ohio), hoping the firm’s specialty in boutiques would provide some much-needed retail therapy. “Their stores were all gray and homogenized,” says Brian Shafley, Chute’s president and creative director, environments. “We wanted to give them some soul.”

In its old format, Shopko’s stores were divided into apparel and hardline, with customers directed in a loop around the store before coming to a bank of cash registers and the exit. “The layout didn’t expose the customer to any storytelling or focal points,” says Shafley. “It was just functional.”

So the new 80,000-square-foot prototype on display in Suamico, Wis., north of Green Bay, places apparel front and center with color-coded departments for men, women and children/infants. A new circular jewelry display anchors the store center, while three destinations along the perimeter, for cosmetics, family entertainment and furniture, radiate out from this core, creating “worlds of merchandise,” says Shafley. “The layout rocked Shopko’s world. It forced them to rethink how they put categories together.”

The designers also challenged Shopko to rename its electronics department, located along the back wall, as “family entertainment” to better appeal to women and open up the possibility for cross-merchandising. “All the things that would make a great Friday night, including popcorn, toys, puzzles, magazines and electronics, are together now,” says Shafley. “It helps reinforce the idea that Shopko’s about the family”