Woodcliff Lake, N.J. — Party City, a specialty retailer and leader in the party goods industry, is accelerating the introduction of its new store format from early success in pilot stores.
The new store design is an evolution of the retailer’s latest format, which provides a reinvented balloon shopping experience and dedicated mini-shops — instead of a traditional aisle format — called ‘birthday worlds’ within the store.
“With this introduction, we have moved away from the traditional aisle experience and have developed two birthday worlds within each store,” explains Dion Miliaresis, vice president of merchandising at Party City. “One is dedicated to kids’ birthdays, and one for general birthday celebrations. These are complete mini-shops, with everything brought together in one place — this makes it easy for the customer to find everything they need and to hopefully discover a few surprises and fun ideas to add to their celebration along the way.”
This new format also has an updated queue experience to allow for engaging, bold merchandising statements, with opportunities to continually adjust what is featured.
In early indicators, customers are responding positively to this new format. “The customer is at the center of everything. This store format allows for a redefined shopping experience to help ease their celebration planning. The new merchandising approach is translating to increases in cross-sales and adjacent product categories. These factors have prompted us to look at how we can accelerate this format and bring this experience to more of our customers across the country,” says Bill Lanza, head of stores at Party City.
Party City plans to introduce the new format in several locations across the country in the first half of this year.
One of its latest reformatted stores in Cumberland, Ga., celebrated with a grand reopening on March 1.
Party City Holdco Inc. (PCHI) is the largest vertically integrated designer, manufacturer, distributor and retailer of party goods in North America. PCHI operates across multiple businesses within its retail division and consumer products division. On the retail side, Party City is a leading omnichannel retailer that operates more than 750+ company-owned and franchise stores. PCHI is headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., with additional locations throughout the Americas and Asia.
For more information, visit www.partycity.com.
SOURCE: Party City®