ShopKo's Twin Valu hypermarket debuts

ShopKo's Twin Valu Hypermarket Debuts

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio -- Super Valu and its ShopKo division premiered Twin Valu, its version of the hypermarket concept, here late last month.

The 180,000-square-foot combination supermarket and discount store reveals some surprising differences between the company's approach to hypermarket retailing and other versions opened by K mart, Wal-Mart and a host of European operators.

Twin Valu boasts a broad, rather than narrow and deep, selection of both food and general merchandise items and is laid out in a manner not dissimilar from a traditional discount store.

"We're not trying to change our customer," said ShopKo vice president Gene Bankers. "Our shoppers have confirmed that they like the discount store concept, and we're sticking with it."

What that means is that Twin Valu will carry 60,000 sku's, considerably more than most hypermarkets, which generally carry 40,000 to 45,000 sku's. The 25,000 food sku's are about double the number generally carried by supermarkets, Bankers said. The 35,000 general merchandise sku's represent the core of merchandise found in a traditional discount store.

Bankers said the store's main thrust will be price.

"We'll be about 10 percent under area grocery operations, and we'll at least match prices of competing discounters," he noted. Twin Valu will also stress brand names--but not at the expense of price.

While food will be the primary drawing card, Twin Valu has also added dominant selections of H&BA, sporting goods, toys, housewares, apparel and seasonal goods, with lesser attention paid to departments like stationery, books, CE and jewelry. All of the latter, however, have been given prime locations at the front of the store.

Twin Valu's design accentuates the familiar. It is warmly lighted throughout, and sightlines are more extensive than in most hypermarkets. The one exception to generally lower fixturing is a warehouse-style promotional aisle that separates food from non-food merchandise. The aisle features massed-out displays of both everyday low price staples like paper towels and "Temporary Price Reduction" goods, like 12-packs of Coke at $2.38 while they last.

The food selection is heavily skewed toward convenience items. A massive deli area is the focal point of the department, and a smokehouse and pizza-to-go installation offer even further convenience. "Our customers are pressed for time, and our experience in the food end of our operations tells us that they're looking for prepared meal items," Bankers noted.

Other convenience statements include dominant frozen dinner displays, 300 different cheeses and huge soda and beer selections--all at prices far below market leaders, according to Bankers.

At 180,000 square feet (140,000 square feet of selling space), Twin Valu is smaller than other hypermarkets, and easy to shop. Extra wide aisles in a grid pattern make the store immediately comprehensible, and ShopKo has thought carefully about adjacencies.

"We looked at other hypermarkets extensively before we built ours," Bankers said. "We tried to learn from others' mistakes."

Departments merge into one another very gradually, drawing customers throughout the store. The "no man's land" between food and general merchandise evident in some other hypermarkets has been virtually eliminated (partly through consistent lighting) and food customers are virtually funneled into the general merchandise area from produce, with the flip side of the promotional aisle and an appealing housewares display to attract them.

The housewares department gradually evolves into lawn and garden, which in turn gives way to toys, which leads into sporting goods, and then to athletic shoes and apparel. The gradual merging of departments is far more subtle than in most discount environments.

Shoppers eventually end up in apparel, and will have to see most other departments, like domestics and RTA, to return to the front of the store.

Apart from price and shopping environment, Twin Valu has made a commitment to top brand names.

Like its ShopKo parent, the store is heavily apparel-intensive, featuring coveted brands such as Levi, Colours by Alexander Julien and prestige discount brands like Brittania, Jordache, Bristol Bay, Lee, Manhattan, Bugle Boy, Dunlop fleece, Gitano, Fruit of the Loom, Chic, Wrangler, Bon Bon and Kate Collins.

Unlike other hypermarkets, Twin Valu does not have a leased courtyard area. Instead, CE, floral, pharmacy and eyecare departments are located on the other side of the checkouts, with individual department registers.

Twin Valu is also distinctive in that it will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "Cleveland has a lot of shift workers, so I think we'll see business in off-hours," Bankers said. "Most of our night costs are fixed anyway, whether we're open or not, so it won't cost much more to stay open all day."

"Our plan is to become the Ohio market share leader in both grocery and general merchandise," he added. Twin Valu may then move to other area states.

PHOTO : ShopKo vp Gene Bankers (inset) at opening of Twin Valu: `We're not trying to change our

PHOTO : shopper.' The new hypermarket, with 60,000 sku's, is designed to be readily accessible to

PHOTO : ShopKo's customer base.

COPYRIGHT 1989 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group