(ATR) Crowds of shoppers, some who line up before dawn, are exceeding expectations for the Olympic Superstore, Around the Rings is told.
Lines to get in the store have wrapped around the front, side and back of the building, which occupies an entire block in downtown Vancouver.
“That’s way past my wildest dreams” Superstore director Dana Hall said in an interview with ATR.
“Even when I saw my targets I thought ‘how am I going to do that’. Now I can see but when you’ve never done this before it’s pretty amazing.”
The store doesn’t do customer counts but Hall estimates “over 20,000 easily” come through the doors every day.
Hall said “all the stars seem to be aligned” for the store’s success.
Most notably, for the first time the Superstore is in a permanent building. Typically the store is found in a temporary marquee within the main Olympic cluster, isolated from the non-ticket holding public.
“Here we are with the Olympic Superstore and 20,000 square feet in a company that has been around for 339 years, and we know how to merchandise” Hall says.
The weather has helped. While forecasts for the rest of the Games look cold and wet, the first half of the Games benefited from sunshine and spring-like temperatures, no doubt making it easier for crowds to wait in outdoor lines.
Of course the product helps too.
“Our buyers are excellent…so we know key items customers want, we know prices customers want.
“I think between that and our design team, who designed a line that is phenomenal and they used the athletes’ input to design that line, so this what the athletes want to wear.”
Product prices range from less than a dollar for postcards to $7500 for a canoe.
Three Million Mittens Not Enough
As an example of the scale of sales, more than 3 million pairs of the Vancouver Olympic mittens have been sold.
On Wednesday, only children’s sizes remained of the hand warmers.
“We did have our final shipment, and my prediction is that all these children’s mittens will be gone tonight” she said.
Theoriginal order was for one million mittens. To keep up with demand, the Hudson’s Bay Company had to order more and ship extras in from stores that don’t have “the velocity” of the Vancouver Superstore.
U.S. talk show star Oprah gave the mittens a boost when they made an appearance on her TV show.
“We just got flooded with calls” Hall said.
Other popular items include Canada t-shirts and hockey-themed items.
Handling Retail Operations
Even with block-long lines, Hall said the queue still moves quickly.
She claims it takes at most 30 minutes to move from the back of the line to the store.
“We don’t want people standing, we want them moving.”
The rest of the HBC store is still running during the Games.
In order to manage the crowds, the Superstore has a dedicated entrance and a fence separates the Superstore from the main store. Security had to be hired to ensure crowds entered at the appropriate entrance.
Hall said the only major issue that had to be fixed involved adding more cash registers. Originally, only 16 registers were used in the Superstore. Four more were brought down from other floors.
Hall says all the store’s restaurants have had lifts in sales, as has the main retail floor, which is split between the Superstore and the traditional layout of the HBC.
“It’s been advantageous to all of the floors” Hall said.
“I think we did really well in our planning. The adjustments we’ve made to pick up the extra customers that we’re getting have been minimal. It was easy to move four more registers up, and we can do it like that. “
More than 480 staff work in the Superstore, more than originally planned.
It’s been a phenomenal success” Hall said.
Paralympic Plans
The Superstore will be in operation for the Paralympics too.
“We’re really excited about that” Hall said.
“I had a customer yell at me the other day saying ‘I hope you’re doing this for the Paralympics because they’re just as important even more important’ I said we are here and we’re going to be doing it for them.”
The change-over is planned for March 1, right after the end of the Olympics.
Written by Ed Hula III.
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