Center Offers Ideas for Retail Displays
By Tom Dochat, The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa.
Jan. 16–The Hershey Co.’s newest building could play a major role in keeping its factories and distribution centers humming.
Hershey’s Global Customer Innovation Center, which opened last month, is designed to provide its customers with ideas and information to help them make decisions for ordering, marketing and displaying Hershey products.
The center is “really a reflection of the importance of collaborating with our customers to bring the right things to market,” said Michelle J. Gloeckler, vice president-general manager of The Hershey Experience.
Gloeckler said Hershey doesn’t sell directly to consumers — except at Chocolate World and the Hershey stores in New York City and Chicago — so it needs support and input from the retailers that buy Hershey products to maximize sales for them and the company.
“It’s important to understand what their strategies for retail merchandising are, for consumer trends and products, so that we can have the best consumer marketing possible, and do it together,” she said.
The 10,000-square-foot building is on Hershey’s headquarters campus and will serve as the focal point for customer-planning sessions and brand-building projects. Hershey has more than 1,000 retail customers and probably gets more than 75 customer visits a year, Gloeckler said.
Major customers are Wal-Mart, Target, drugstores and supermarket chains.
One of the center’s prominent features is an innovation room where customers can sample new products and provide their input. A merchandising room enables customers to see rack displays and product groupings that Hershey feels would be a convenience to the public.
The innovation room shows customers “some very early samples that we would have made in a pilot plant or made by hand,” Gloeckler said. Customers can sample products and provide feedback on how they might merchandise them, she said.
The merchandising room has rows of products, both Hershey items and similar products made by competitors. Part of the room is set up like a convenience store, with coolers and a coffee stand.
“Customers will see the stuff we have and say they didn’t realize Hershey had that many flavors of Ice Breakers or that many flavors and types of cookies,” she said.
Hershey also offers suggestions on how to group products, such as displaying premium chocolates with wine bottles, chocolate syrup on a wire rack by the milk cooler, and mints near the coffee machine.
The room also shows racks that Hershey supplies to many of its customers, such as one that promotes this year’s 100th anniversary of Hershey’s Kisses.
Hershey hopes customers pick up merchandising ideas to help make their in-store displays “ever clearer, neater and more organized,” Gloeckler said.
The center also has a large meeting room where presentations are made. Hershey might bring as many as 15 to 18 people in and out throughout the day, Gloeckler said. Smaller meeting rooms are available for more personal discussions.
A dining room and kitchen are available, and a wireless room enables customers to remain in touch with their home offices.
Since promoting Hershey products is a major goal of the center, the building has some subtle branding features, such as Kiss-shaped lights, a factory appearance toward the ceiling, inserts in the floor that look like Hershey bars, and chairs with Kiss cutouts.
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