HOFFMAN ESTATES, IL— Kmart is placing new emphasis on design in home products and merchandising as part of a drive to create a more enhanced shopping experience in stores and online.
Seth Stevens, Kmart divisional vp and creative director for home, has been working to make shopping more fun and convenient. He told HOMEWORLD BUSINESS® that he and his design team are participating in assortment development to ensure that Kmart will be a showcase of the latest domestic fashion trends.
At the same time, he has been involved in an evolution of Kmart’s online merchandising as well as a pilot program that is determining how the retailer will communicate its style commitment to in-store shoppers.
“I work with marketing, online, merchants, packaging, photo studio. I’m involved with every angle of product development right now from ideation to coordinating the in-store look, to how things appear online. I’m involved on the senior level, with my directors and designer involved at merchant and other operational levels,” he said.
Stevens said the involvement of the design team in so many elements of production and presentation serves a two-fold purpose, to coordinate between different departments and even buyers, and to push design into its approach to the mass market.
Consumers have evolved in terms of their approach to fashion, home fashion included, Stevens said. Kmart helped facilitate that advance in the mass market in part by fostering Martha Stewart products and an approach to selling them that emphasized coordinating fashion forward and stylish variations on core looks, a strategy that has been widely emulated.
Today, with media from broadcast to cable to online to social more focused on fashion than ever, Kmart is differentiating itself by making a point of its ability to provide on trend home styles, Stevens said.
“Trend is very important at Kmart,” he said. “In the past, trend was happening in more of the high-end market. But through media, home improvement shows, reality TV, social media, everyone has access to information quickly. As a retailer, we need to see what’s new, to be trend right. That’s really important.”
Consumers today are barraged by fashion input, Stevens noted, so Kmart has to project current styles throughout the products offered in the home department if it is to win sales.
“For our back to campus program, we’ve designed and developed three core looks in three very distinct patterns, beautiful plaids, multicolor florals and a black and white global look. From a trend perspective, we’re going to be in front for back to school and going forward into fall,” Stevens said.
Not only have consumers become more aware of fashion, they’ve also become more sophisticated buying into style. Stevens said mass market consumers haven’t jumped into fashion with abandon. They are conservative when it comes to big ticket items. Yet, as they’ve broadened their home fashion perspective, mass market consumers have figured out how to maintain a stylish home without taking fashion risks.
“People are making bigger purchases in trend,” Stevens said, “but, when it comes down to it, a lot is in accessorizing, where people can swap fashion in and out. Some furniture items are bigger investments, and the consumer tends to stay a little more neutral.”
Indeed, as part of the home fashion push, Kmart has introduced its first full-sized sofa design in a transitional style, providing shoppers with a product that can be a centerpiece supporting any number of living room styles.
Kmart intends to establish a range of room settings that include central items, such as major appliances in kitchen or tables in dining rooms, that consumers can use as cornerstones as they build a room by mixing and matching.
Design is the starting point, Stevens said, as it provides a menu the consumer can apply to a given room. In its merchandising, Kmart wants to provide inspiration and be a style resource.
Online, the company is reconstituting its website to feature images of the featured room settings with listings below that will allow shoppers to purchase the individual items depicted or use them as a starting point to make selections. Kmart also will examine how it can integrate room setting presentations on sales floors, Stevens said, with a 10-store test of room-style merchandising running this fall.
Kmart will consider shopper response to the merchandising, including sales productivity of the integrated space and surrounding fixtures that carry related items such as throw pillows.
“The tests begin in the fall and there will be more in the spring,” Stevens said. “We will be paying attention to what is working and what is not. We want to find what, when we provide coordinated solutions, is working better and what creates a larger market basket. That’s really the goal in-store, and we’re executing with more coordinated looks through in-store merchandise. Online we’re showing coordinated solutions.”
In support of the initiatives, Kmart is launching social media efforts.
“In-store execution, online execution and social media, those are the big avenues we’re going after,” Stevens said. “One of biggest changes is that, at Kmart, we’re moving less to sell items and more to become a solutions business so anyone can have a one stop shop at affordable prices. It’s a matter of executing that through all of our channels.”
In the company’s strategy, design is an element that informs in the entire shopping experience, Stevens said.
“Design is becoming even more important, and it’s not even about the individual products,” he said. “It’s about the room. And these are the items we at Kmart want to place together as a look. Design is important from start to finish.”