Discount retail veterans to embark on new venture
A “dream team” of executives with deep roots in discount retailing said it united to create a new business that will have retail, wholesale and e-commerce components. The team includes Bill Shaner, former president and CEO of Save-A-Lot Stores and current principal of Shaner Management Group; Tom Holley, former president and CEO of Grandpa’s Stores and founder/president of DEALS: Nothing Over a Dollar; Larry Tyler, executive vice president, merchandising, Grandpa’s, DEALS and Save-A-Lot; Rick Meyer, executive vice president – real estate development, Grandpa’s, DEALS and Save-A-Lot, and principal of TAT Capital & Consulting; and Jeff Schneider, buyer/category expert, Grandpa’s, DEALS and Save-A-Lot, and founder of his own closeout and distribution business.
According to the team, the wholesale division will be called STL Global Sales, and the retail and e-commerce divisions will operate under the name Here Today. STL Global Sales will source and sell deeply discounted consumables and general merchandise across multiple categories to a network of wholesale contacts ranging from major national chains to small independent wholesalers and retailers. The team said its network of contacts, cultivated over decades, will allow them to identify and make “opportunistic buys at remarkable prices.” Those savings will be passed on to customers on both the wholesale and the retail sides. The wholesale side also will provide a “unique solution” for manufacturers for end-of-lifecycle products, including overstocks, expiring or retiring product lots, discontinued items, close-outs and seconds.
Later this year, the team plans to launch the retail and e-commerce divisions, opening the first four Here Today stores in the St. Louis market, where the company is based. The team said the stores will offer a “unique assortment” of deeply discounted merchandise across numerous categories (grocery, refrigerated and frozen food, housewares, electronics and small appliances, storage solutions, health and beauty, home décor, seasonal, gifts, candy and more), all cleverly presented in an “engaging, interactive shopping environment.” Approximately 50 percent of the offerings will be consumables. Unlimited by a certain price point or category, the merchandise mix will be ever-changing. As the team puts it, the deals will be so “shocking, they are likely to be here today and gone tomorrow.”
“We believe that we can deliver exceptional values at a time when consumers place tremendous importance on saving both time and money,” Holley explained. “We’re taking the best parts of some of the other value-centric retail formats out there, blending in on-trend merchandise, pricing it to knock people’s socks off, and bundling it all in a store that is truly inspiring. In doing so, we believe we will transform the category of off-price retail.”
Shaner told Private Label â?¨ Store Brands that his team “very much” would like to develop a store brand program for the company.
“We love private label and understand the value that it could bring, and we’re very much interested in pursuing that,” he noted. “It’s just trying to work our way through the challenges of just not having scale at first. … Understanding the private label business as I do, I understand how important it is to have scale from a labeling and packaging standpoint and to procure the product effectively.”
For the brick-and-mortar stores, the format likely will be in the range of 15,000 to 20,000 square feet, and locations will be in accessible, high-traffic neighborhood strip centers, the team explained. Global architecture and design firm Gensler will design the prototype and first locations, though no sites have been chosen yet. Plans call for expanding the concept from its Midwestern base, with hundreds of Here Today stores projected nationwide within five years.
As for the e-commerce business, its website will be live by mid-2013, the team said.