Yardbirds Hardware
Yardbirds opens first warehouse storeCarol Tice
With help from friends, a new format is born
SANTA ROSA, CALIF. - Perched on a hilltop on the north end of this town near San Francisco, the new Yardbirds Home Center has been attracting shoppers in droves since it opened in early June. In fact, the store's biggest problem may be that, with only 880 spaces, the parking lot - which it will eventually share with several other businesses currently under construction, including an Albertson's supermarket - may be too small.
The creation of the 121,000-square-foot warehouse store took more than a year, and represented a first for Yardbirds, whose stores average 40,000 square feet.
"You've either got to keep up with the competition or get the hell out," said company president John Headley, explaining his decision to step into big-box territory. "And we didn't want to get out."
Headley toured the country looking for ideas for the store. Three retailers were particularly inspirational and helpful in sharing information about how they put their warehouses together: Dennis Orem of single-unit Jerry's Home Improvement Center in Eugene, Ore.; Carl Grittner, president of Revelstoke Home Centers in British Columbia which operates Revy Home & Garden warehouse home centers; and Headley's lifelong friend David Heerensperger, the chairman of 32-store Eagle Hardware & Garden in Renton, Wash.
The result is a store that incorporates design elements from several other formats, yet manages to convey Yardbirds' own unique style. For instance, lighting was traditionally the up-front department in the chain's 10 smaller stores. The warehouse unit presents a kitchen and bath design showroom up-front, but a wide main aisle leads directly to lighting, which is still highly visible, and one of the company's signature departments.
Besides the basics, the store's lighting department offers a wide range of styles, including old-fashioned-look mica fixtures. One vendor, Quoizel, displays several models of elegant stained-glass lamps, including a $300 torchiere.
Like Eagle's stores, the kitchen and bath department attracts attention with major-brand identification, with prominent signage featuring Kohler, Moen, Price Pfister, Jacuzzi, Conan and others. The area sits on carpeted floors and includes a large help desk, staffed by four kitchen designers.
Nearly every merchandise line was expanded in the new store, and, Headley said, "there's still not enough room." He noted that in a few departments, including housewares, there wasn't enough room to add everything he wanted.
But the larger space has allowed the company to offer very complete selections in many areas, such as seed from half a dozen vendors, and a barbecue grill line that includes a $700, 371/2-inch in diameter Weber ranch kettle.
The company also added a drive-through lumberyard to the store's format, which is unique to the market, Headley said. He wants to expand the company's sales to contractors, who currently account for between 10 percent and 15 percent of its customer base and its sales, which last year were $91 million.
With the area's economy finally on an upswing, staffing the larger store presented another challenge. The older store the warehouse unit replaces had 65 employees; the larger unit needed a staff of 190, said Headley, to sustain Yardbirds' customer-service level. The warehouse unit has help desks in kitchen and bath, plumbing and electricals, building materials, lumber, decor, and lawn and garden departments.
To make sure it had enough employees in time for opening, Yardbirds hired a number of lower-level workers off the welfare rolls to perform tasks like dusting the displays.
Preventing bottlenecks in the back-room, where goods sit waiting to be priced, is the toughest operations challenge, Headley said. He has five employees assigned full-time to stock shelves, while four staffers armed with hand-held computers handle the pricing of newly arrived goods.
Besides the design and hiring problems, the new store represented a financial challenge for a company that hadn't opened a new store since its Vacaville, Calif., unit in 1987. The total investment in the new warehouse was a daunting $19 million including inventory for the store, Headley said. Costs were financed in part by a bank loan.
High real estate costs in the market, along with a special-needs hilltop site that required $5 million of earth-moving before construction could begin, contributed to the expensive start-up. But with land in the area exceedingly scarce for a retail operation this large, Headley selected the site because it was nearest the company's existing Santa Rosa unit, which he planned to close after the warehouse store opened. He didn't want customers to have to go very far to get to the new location.
The new store is operated by Headley's son, Jim, whose management expertise and willingness to take on a warehouse-sized responsibility were major factors in Headley's decision to build the larger store. "He had a lot to do with it," Headley said of his son.
Initial reaction from customers to the new store seemed overwhelmingly positive. Santa Rosa native Mary Jo Barclay used to shop at the old Yardbirds, and liked the new store. With a $600 budget for redoing her bathroom, she was in the store picking up supplies for the project, and had spent more than three hours looking over the store's offerings before selecting some paint and sundries.
She said, "The new store is huge. I need help finding things. But I looked around at other stores, and liked what I saw here. And the prices are good."
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