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Selling the Store
Area retailers reveal secrets of sales success
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Business New Haven
10/13/2003
By: Richard Rangoon
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Retailers must continually adapt their businesses to the market to maximize profits, and in some cases to survive. Following are descriptions of four area businesspeople, the challenges they face, and the approaches they use to thrive in a poor economy.
Campus Clothing
57 Broadway
New Haven
Owner, Barry Cobden
For 15 years Barry Cobden has focused on selling Yale-oriented merchandise such as T-shirts and sweatshirts at his Campus Clothing store in New Haven. The business caters mostly to Yale students, their families and tourists.
Cobden was an employee at Cutler’s record store in the late 1960s when he and a partner started Cutler’s II. He bought out the partner and turned the shop into a family business — a variety store that sold everything from Levi’s to lava lamps.
In the early 1970s Cobden began to transform Campus Clothing into the store it is today. During its 40 years on Broadway, the store has evolved by means of a progression of ideas that has led to continuous changes in merchandising.
A store must have a "must-do-something-different-every-day attitude," he says.
He encourages this approach at all three of his business. These include flagship store Campus Clothing, and two other divisions: Campus Customs — a store that sells Yale memorabilia — and a division in Hamden that does screen printing and embroidery. The three divisions comprise Campus Clothing Co. Inc.
Customers of the screen-printing business include youth sports teams, schools and other retailers.
At any one time, about 80 percent of Cobden’s business was generated by a select few products, but the best-selling items are changing constantly.
Cobden says he tracks inventory by the hour, although he says he tries not to get too bogged down with computer programs. He finds that the more complex the system, the more confusion is possible. He has spent thousands of dollars for consultants to help set up his inventory control system, he says.
Campus Clothing and Campus Customs each have six employees, while the screening and embroidery division has 12. He hopes his sons will expand the latter.
In terms of competition, Cobden says that although he is influenced by other businesses, he doesn’t copy them. He focuses on making needed changes to his business and coming up with new products and sales approaches.
Moreover, he has found that businesses often complement one another. For example, if a pizza parlor and an ice cream store establish themselves close together, both benefit, he says. Malls are a classic example of this principal.
Campus Clothing is open daily and staffed with employees chosen for being adaptable and eager to learn, Cobden says. Personal service is important to attracting repeat customers.
Like many retail stores, Cobden’s business increases drastically in December. Near Christmas, the merchandise sells itself, he says.
JC Music
529 W. Main St.
Meriden
General Manager, Jeff Caloulette
Although JC Music in Meriden sells plenty of merchandise in December, September and early October are equally profitable, says General Manager Jeff Caioluette. Instrument rentals peak as children return to school.
Caioluette started JC Music 15 years ago and credits work weeks of 60 to 70 hours for his success. He holds a master’s degree in music and plays practically every band instrument. The business is family-owned, and he concedes that his background certainly affected the type of store in which the family chose to invest.
Sales have increased about ten to 12 percent every year since the business started, and Caioluette expects this year will be no exception. The store hosts 200 students and 18 instructors who use the store’s practice rooms, and sales of sheet music and musical instrument are strong, he says.
Caioluette has seven employees, all of whom have been trained to handle questions about the woodwind, brass, percussion and stringed instruments the store carries. This contrasts with huge, or "box" music stores, in which employees are familiar with only one department, he says.
Caioluette makes a point to keep up with the products he sells. He reads trade magazines, attends trade shows, monitors trends and keeps an eye out for the latest products. His computer system lists his 60 vendors by the products he has in his inventory.
He has used several approaches to promote the store. He found that television is very effective, while newspaper advertisements have been ineffective for him, he says. However, he has had some success with newspaper inserts, he notes.
Sending direct mailings to 6,000 customers is very effective, he says. Once a year he has a private, closed-door "super sale" to which only the 6,000 direct-mail customers are invited. During that three- to four-hour period he sells as much merchandise as he otherwise would in a month, he says.
The store started out in a 600-square-foot space, then expanded to 3,000 square feet. In May of this year he added another 1,500 square feet as well as a stage for musical performances. Caioluette took the opportunity to expand the store after a neighboring retailer moved out.
He says he doesn’t worry about competition because his prices are competitive. In fact, he says that advertising by his rivals probably draws some customers to his store looking for the products advertised.
Caioluette says he has trained his seven-member staff to maintain a positive and friendly atmosphere by walking the fine line between acknowledging a customer’s presence and hounding them.
R.W. Hine Hardware
231 Maple Ave.
Cheshire
Owner/Manager Sally Bowman
Much of a hardware store’s business is driven by the weather, Sally Bowman says.
When it snows a lot, more people stop by the store because they would prefer not to travel. As a result, the store sells plenty of sand, salt and snow shovels.
During summer months with little rain, the store sells lots of garden hoses. A rainy weekend keeps people from raking or gardening, so the store sells fewer yard maintenance items.
However, Bowman is not content to let the weather completely dictate the fortunes of her Cheshire store. Her staff wraps gifts at Christmastime and delivers larger items, such as extension ladders.
Her 38 employees also learn to work together as a team to get the customer what she or he needs as quickly as possible, she says.
The business was started in 1910, and Bowman and her seven older brothers bought the store in 1979. Two of her brothers were graduated from the University of New Haven with business degrees, and her father was a plumber, so the family had a solid foundation to build on, Bowman says.
Town zoning regulations limit R.W. Hine Hardware to 18,000 square feet, so Bowman tries to increase sales volume through varying the product mix in the fixed space with which she has to work. She chooses new products based on reading trade magazines, attending hardware shows and listening to what customers have to say.
Bowman draws many repeat customers because they like to talk with employees with whom they are familiar, and because at least one manager is always on duty to answer questions.
R.W. Hine also is more efficient than chain stores, asserts Bowman. For example, mixing paint at her store takes much less time than it would at a large warehouse store, she says.
Bowman runs a half-page advertisement every week in the Cheshire Herald — except for store specials, for which she sometimes runs a full-page ad. She also uses inserts in the community weekly.
Another advertising tactic is placing the store’s name on the shirts of players in Cheshire Youth Baseball and Cheshire Junior Football.
Two trucks arrive from Ace hardware suppliers every week to stock the store, which operates on a just-in-time basis to avoid building up unused inventory.
Bowman’s inventory changes with the seasons. April, May and June are strong months for selling gardening supplies, while October, November, and December are good times for selling power tools and toolboxes, often for Christmas gifts.
During the Christmas season customers will buy gifts that range from cordless screwdrivers to picnic grills. H.R. Hine also has a large Christmas shop that sells lights and ornaments.
During Thanksgiving, the store has a sale on 48 items and offers coupons and certificates year-round as incentives to buy.
Book Haven
290 York St.
New Haven
Owner Susan Schwab
If she and her partner had been fully aware of the challenges that soon would confront them, they probably wouldn’t have opened Book Haven in the 1970s, says Susan Schwab. The pair had just graduated from Yale with master’s degrees in classics and dramatic criticism and had no previous business experience.
However, Schwab had grown up in New Haven (her father was a faculty member at the university), and she sensed a need for an academic bookstore.
Perhaps the time period helped, Schwab says, but the driving forces behind the project were enthusiasm and hard work. The enthusiasm came from Schwab’s love of academic books, and the hard work from her desire to make her business successful.
For the past 25 years Schwab has taken book orders from Yale professors and carried hard-to-find titles from small presses and university presses.
Chain bookstores tend to focus on bestsellers and other high-profile titles, so her store has a niche, she says. Wholesale booksellers often won’t buy books from small, independent presses.
The Internet has made books from small presses more widely available, but many people like to come to the store to browse and see the books firsthand.
Soon after she started her bookstore, Schwab discovered that having the idea to start a business is a long way from making the idea work. However, the store’s central location and word-of-mouth have helped the store to thrive, she says.
Most of the store’s business is generated by the Yale community, and some students buy gifts before going home for Christmas. However, Schwab’s peak sales month are September and January, when students buy books for their classes.
Schwab has tried advertising, but says she has found word-of-mouth much more effective in drawing customers. Improved parking in the downtown area would probably help her business, as would a stronger overall business presence, she says.
One way in which Schwab promotes Book Haven is through authors’ parties, usually featuring professors from Yale. Another is by placing 20 books in the store’s front window every month and challenging customers to figure out the common theme in the display.
However, keeping up with Yale’s demand for the store’s books, including special orders, does not allow her to hold as many creative marketing events as she might like, she notes.
In selecting her inventory, Schwab favors maximizing the breadth of her titles by ordering a single copy of each book at a time. She carefully balances business considerations with her desire to have a scholarly and interesting collection, including books unlikely to be found at large chain stores.
Consistent with this philosophy, she will commonly stock a book for a year or more if she deems it an important part of her collection.
Book Haven does not stock bestsellers or books that are not of an academic nature. For example, although the store has a section on philosophy, it does not have sections on gardening or science fiction.
Schwab usually has from four to eight people on staff that help her follow her approach to selling books: "You must know your community, know your product, be in love with your project, and have a vision and not dilute it," she says.
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