U.S. gia Award winner Kitchen Kaboodle reinvents retail.
Store Stats Number of Stores: 5 Location: Portland, Ore. Year Established: 1975 Average Store Size: 14,500 square feet (Three stores are 14,500 square feet; one store is 12,500 square feet; and one store is approx. 9,000 square feet) Number of Employees: 50 year-round, plus seasonal help Owners: John Whisler and Lynn Becraft Web Site: www.kitchenkaboodle.com
Kitchen Kaboodle is onto something big. Bigger than bread slicers. Bigger than wine aerators. Bigger than self-carbonating soda machines. In March of last year, the Portland, Ore.-based kitchenware, housewares and home furnishings retailer unleashed a revolutionary retail strategy on a sour economy — and met with sweet success.
The retailer took two bold steps. First, it lowered all of its prices in all five of its stores. Second, to make the lower prices possible, Kitchen Kaboodle cut costs by limiting its hours to four days a week (Thursday through Sunday). This gutsy move garnered international media attention for the stores. It also turned heads here at The Gourmet Retailer, where our editors were looking for the next U.S. gia Award winner — a truly innovative leader in housewares retailing.
The Global Innovator Award (gia) honors housewares retail excellence around the world. Launched in 2000 by the International Housewares Association (IHA), the gia Award is presented annually at the International Home + Housewares (IH+H) Show in Chicago.
Each year, housewares trade publications serving as the exclusive gia sponsor for their respective countries nominate one retailer for this honor. As the official gia sponsor from the United States, The Gourmet Retailer nominated Kitchen Kaboodle as the U.S. gia winner for 2010.
“It’s very satisfying to be nominated for this award, particularly at this time,” said John Whisler, vice president of Kitchen Kaboodle, who co-owns the five stores with business partner Lynn Becraft. “It’s been a tough year for everyone, but we hope we can show that retailers are still doing exciting, innovative things to respond to today’s challenges.”
Portland or Bust
Kitchen Kaboodle was founded in 1975, at the advent of the gourmet revolution in the United States. The stores have evolved from a strict focus on food and cooking to encompass a broader take on the home, including an extensive selection of furniture and accessories.
Today, the retailer’s five stores range in size from 9,000 to 14,500 square feet. Three of the stores are located in destination shopping neighborhoods; one is in a suburban strip mall; and the fifth in an outdoor shopping village concept.
All five stores are designed to make customers feel comfortable and at home — literally. “We’re the local folks,” explains Whisler. “We have big signs in our stores that say: ‘That’s right; we’re local.’ We also feature as many local products as we can.” And while many of the housewares and home furnishings in Kitchen Kaboodle stores are not made locally, they are all carefully selected for their appeal and utility in Portland.
“Our customers can trust what they buy from us,” asserts Whisler. “They can trust that we not only carry the best products, but that we carry the best products for houses and home cooks here in Portland — not Phoenix, Boston or Minneapolis.”
In a city that is decidedly down-to-earth, but also known for its sophisticated downtown sensibility, Kitchen Kaboodle has found that what works is what’s real and what customers really want. “Our stores have character,” says Whisler. “We want our stores to feel comfortable, colorful, full of texture and full of product. We don’t believe in creating retail temples with a lot of fixtures and alcoves designed to make you feel awestruck by the coolness of it all. We like to see the products and let it feel comfortable and friendly.”
A Local Identity
“Portland is a city that values its own,” says Whisler, “and our customers identify us as their local kitchenware/housewares store.” Kitchen Kaboodle reinforces this relationship at every opportunity. Its logo is always followed by: “Locally owned since 1975.” The locally owned message also goes into all of its advertising, every e-mail and newsletter, and is often mentioned by employees in the store.
Since Whisler and Becraft believe that with local business ownership comes local responsibility, Kitchen Kaboodle is also an active member of its community. The retailer is known in the Portland area for its support of K-12 education through donations to school auctions, advocacy for bond measures and for service with education-related organizations.
The retailer is also a founding and funding member of the Think Local First campaign, an advocacy organization that has succeeded in raising awareness of the economic benefits returned by locally owned businesses. It has established an ongoing relationship with The Community Warehouse to take slightly damaged but usable products from its stores to give to families in need.
And in a city known for environmentalism, Kitchen Kaboodle has fueled its trucks with bio-diesel and sourced shopping plastic bags that are both recyclable and biodegradable, which is more expensive for the retailer, but better for the community.
Hands-On Housewares
Kitchen Kaboodle discerningly chooses products that are perfect for Portland living, but customers don’t have to take the store’s word for it. They can test-drive any product right in the store — grating, shredding, whipping and blending before they buy.
The store hosts daily product demos of its coffee machines; and on the weekends, Kitchen Kaboodle adds a variety of other products to the demo mix — from juice extractors to pressure cookers — and customers are encouraged to participate. In addition, interactive displays are a constant fixture in all the Kitchen Kaboodle stores, allowing customers to experience the products firsthand, whether it be the retailer’s well-publicized “Gadget of the Month” or another high-quality item.
Everything about Kitchen Kaboodle’s merchandising invites customers to get a real feel for the products. “Nobody buys a box. They buy a product,” says Whisler, which is why he and his staff take everything out of its packaging and get the housewares in the hands of customers. “It’s much more attractive and suggestive when you see a wall of teakettles out of their boxes, than a bunch of boxes with pictures of teakettles,” explains Whisler.
Many of Kitchen Kaboodle’s most successful promotions are also hands-on, like its perennially popular knife-sharpening seminar. Led by an instructor from the Oregon Culinary Institute, who also has his own knife sharpening business on wheels, the promotion runs every November through the first week of December. The instructor brings his knife sharpening truck to each of the five Kitchen Kaboodle stores and teaches customers how to sharpen and care for their knives. He also talks about the uses of different kinds of knives and what customers may want to add to their collection. For a nominal fee, customers can have their knives sharpened in the truck. While Kitchen Kaboodle offers knife sharpening throughout the year, this event puts a local face on the service.
Another of Kitchen Kaboodle’s popular and long-standing promotions is its annual food processor trade-in. For more than 10 years, each spring, Kitchen Kaboodle has invited its customers to bring in their old food processors and get a trade-in value toward the purchase of a new machine. The retailer then donates the still working food processors to local charities.
A Retailer on the Move
While Kitchen Kaboodle strives to create a comfortable ambience in its stores, its retail space is anything but predictable. “The best way to describe [our approach to merchandising] is ever-changing,” says Whisler. While he does set aside parts of each store for cookware, bakeware, cutlery, glassware, etc., those spots are changing throughout the year. “We have a display crew that is always moving/changing/revising fixture layouts and display content to keep the stores fresh and interesting,” he says.
With a breadth of home furnishings, housewares and kitchenware products to display and cross-merchandise, Whisler and his team expertly showcase their wares using a balance of delineation and integration. In Kitchen Kaboodle’s two-story locations, 80 percent of the home furnishings are on the second floor. In its three other single-story store formats, the flooring distinguishes the department. For example, tile is used in housewares and hardwood for home furnishings.
Reinventing Retail
Kitchen Kaboodle took a simple philosophy — a commitment to stocking only products that are top-quality and selling them for less than they’ll be found anywhere else — and reinvented itself as a retailer open only on the busiest shopping days of the week: Thursday through Sunday. In terms of sales, the result has been that in some categories and with some vendors, the retailer is ahead of its sales a year ago.
Whisler says the change to four days was about “responding to the recession in a dramatic and positive way.” After Thanksgiving, Kitchen Kaboodle expanded its hours to seven days a week, but promptly returned to its four-day schedule at the end of the holiday season.
Of course, the reduction in store hours meant that Whisler and partner Becraft had to make the difficult decision to go with a smaller staff. “The upside,” says Whisler, “is that we have a small, very dedicated staff (many of whom have been with the store for more than 10 years), and that both co-owners of Kitchen Kaboodle are on the sales floor as well. Together, we make an exceptionally knowledgeable team, which also serves our customers well.”
With a four-day schedule, Kitchen Kaboodle is aggressively focused on serving its customers well. One of the ways the retailer does this is by being in stock on the key items people want. “These days, people are looking for basics and essentials more than ever,” notes Whisler. “We make sure that we’re well-stocked and well-priced on these items.”
So, what do Kitchen Kaboodle customers think of these big changes? “We have received literally one or two complaints,” says Whisler of the four-day schedule, adding that the overwhelming reaction has been positive. “People love saving money, and as we’ve seen for some 35 years, most people don’t shop Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday,” he notes. “It’s a move that has given us stores full of happy customers and one that is sustainable for us.”
Kitchen Kaboodle will join housewares retailers from more than 20 other countries in a review process by gia’s Global Jury. The winners will be announced at the IH+H Show this March 14-16, 2010, at Chicago’s McCormick Place.
