Inside the Secret World of Trader Joe’s.

Posted by truecreek on August 25, 2010 under More Dam News | Be the First to Comment

By Beth Kowitt, FORTUNE.

Apple’s retail stores aren’t the only place where lines form these days. It’s 7:30 on a July morning, and already a crowd has gathered for the opening of Trader Joe’s newest outpost, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The waiting shoppers chat about their favorite Trader Joe’s foods, and a woman in line launches into a monologue comparing the retailer’s West Coast and East Coast locations. Another customer suggests that the chain will be good for Chelsea, even though the area is already brimming with places to buy groceries, including Whole Foods and several upscale food boutiques.

But Trader Joe’s is no ordinary grocery chain. It’s an offbeat, fun discovery zone that elevates food shopping from a chore to a cultural experience. It stocks its shelves with a winning combination of low-cost, yuppie-friendly staples (cage-free eggs and organic blue agave sweetener) and exotic, affordable luxuries — Belgian butter waffle cookies or Thai lime-and-chili cashews — that you simply can’t find anyplace else.

Employees dress in goofy trademark Hawaiian shirts, hand stickers out to your squirming kids, and cheerfully refund your money if you’re unhappy with a purchase — no questions asked. At the Chelsea store opening, workers greeted customers with high-fives and free cookies. Try getting that kind of love at the Piggly Wiggly.

It’s little wonder that Trader Joe’s is one of the hottest retailers in the U.S. It now boasts 344 stores in 25 states and Washington, D.C., and strip-mall operators and consumers alike aggressively lobby the chain, based in Monrovia, Calif., to come to their towns. A Trader Joe’s brings with it good jobs, and its presence in your community is like an affirmation that you and your neighbors are worldly and smart.

The privately held company’s sales last year were roughly $8 billion, the same size as Whole Foods’ and bigger than those of Bed Bath & Beyond, No. 314 on the Fortune 500 list. Unlike those massive shopping emporiums, Trader Joe’s has a deliberately scaled-down strategy: It is opening just five more locations this year. The company selects relatively small stores with a carefully curated selection of items. (Typical grocery stores can carry 50,000 stock-keeping units, or SKUs; Trader Joe’s sells about 4,000 SKUs, and about 80% of the stock bears the Trader Joe’s brand.) The result: Its stores sell an estimated $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double Whole Foods’. The company has no debt and funds all growth from its own coffers.

More about Inside the Secret World of Trader Joe’s here.

You Think This is a Bike Store?

Posted by truecreek on August 18, 2010 under More Dam News | Be the First to Comment

What a brilliant way to market a bike store.

From Photoblog:

Co-owner Christian Petersen looks out of a window at his bicycle shop in Altlandsberg, north-east of Berlin August 17, 2010. The owners attached about 120 bicycles on the facade to advertise their shop.

Photo credit:

Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters

Home Broadband 2010, a Pew Study.

Posted by truecreek on under research | Be the First to Comment

By Aaron Smith.

After several consecutive years of modest but consistent growth, broadband adoption slowed dramatically in 2010. Two-thirds of American adults (66%) currently use a high-speed Internet connection at home, a figure that is not statistically different from what The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found at a similar point in 2009, when 63% of Americans were broadband adopters.

The lack of growth in broadband adoption at the national level was mirrored across a range of demographic groups, with African-Americans being a major exception. Broadband adoption by African-Americans now stands at 56%, up from 46% at a similar point in 2009. That works out to a 22% year-over-year growth rate, well above the national average and by far the highest growth rate of any major demographic group.

Read more about Home Broadband 2010, a Pew Study, here.

Stella Artois Positions Its Beer as a ‘Thing of Beauty’.

Posted by truecreek on July 14, 2010 under More Dam News | Be the First to Comment

By Elena Malykhina

Stella Artois has enlisted famous photographer Bert Stern to create Vogue-like images for a U.S. campaign that depicts the finer things in life.

The campaign, created by Mother New York, positions Stella Artois as “the most premium beer in the world.” It kicks off with an ad shot by Stern, which recreates a 1960 cover of Vogue. The ad shows a man enamored with a woman who is drinking Stella Artois beer. The tagline is: “She is a thing of beauty.”

That ad will run in print and out-of-home in the U.S. for six months starting this week. Michael Ian Kaye, a creative director at Mother, said additional ads—including TV—will break during the holidays (November/December timeframe).

Kaye said the U.S. effort builds on a Stella Artois campaign currently running in the U.K. Some of that overseas creative is currently featured on the company’s Web site, which also sports the new tagline.

“‘She a thing of beauty’ came from the work we’ve done in the U.K. It’s really about a brand that has been established with a sense of luxury,” said Kaye. “We were tasked with creating a U.S. print campaign that bring that notion to life.”

The ads are also meant reflect Stella Artois’ target consumer: a more sophisticated beer drinker. Kaye said: “While, it tends to be a slightly more female base, we’re targeting both men and women who lead a certain lifestyle.”