After what it said was early success in pilot stores, Party City is accelerating the introduction of its new store format. The new design is an evolution of the retailer’s latest format which, among other distinguishing features, provides a reinvented balloon shopping experience. Customers have easy accessibility to the depth and breadth of Party City’s balloon assortment, which has a dedicated service area.
The latest design delivers the benefits of the new balloon experience while also bringing birthday shopping to the next level, with birthday worlds, as Dion Miliaresis, VP of Merchandising at Party City, describes them.
“With this introduction, we have moved away from the traditional aisle experience and have developed two birthday worlds within each store. One is dedicated to kids’ birthdays, and one for general birthday celebrations,” said Miliaresis. “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 allows for testing of new product assortments, especially focused on categories related to kids celebrations, such as trending favors, toys and more. Additionally, the updated queue experience allows for engaging, bold merchandising statements, with opportunities to continually adjust what is featured.
“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,” said Bill Lanza, head of stores at Party City.
As a result, Party City plans to introduce the new format in several locations across the country in the first half of this year.
