Nikki Baird

Stores Inside Stores Lead to Sales

January 20, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
All across the country, retailers are taking advantage of store-within-a-store concepts to attract shoppers and drive revenue for all the merchants involved, according to The Sacramento Bee. Are stores-within-the-store more critical to retail success today than in the past?      [more...]

I think it depends so much on brand. Whose brand should be promoted? Is it a poor reflection on JCPenney that it needs Sephora, or does it help their own brand image? And does it help Sephora reach consumers who might not have shopped them otherwise, or does it dilute their brand to have the association with JCP? I never understood Martha Stewart and Kmart, but Martha Stewart and Macy's makes sense. Lands' End and Sears--with their store-within-the-store concept--didn't work at all. It felt like someone had dropped a completely different store, with more upscale merchandise, into the middle of a Home Depot. Alternatively, Target never lets another brand have the same degree of supremacy inside its four walls as the Target brand, but they do just fine in brand alliances around merchandise.

As long as the alliance makes sense, both monetarily and in the story you're telling to customers, then it should be a no-brainer. But I think it depends a lot on the strength of your own brand whether this kind of strategy will work for you.