Most people wouldn’t think of buying a car without taking it for a spin. Rob Pehkonen asks them to do the same with their washing machines.
Pehkonen operates three Maytag “test-drive” stores along the Front Range, and he is opening a fourth in March. Customers can haul in their laundry to try out his Maytag washers or bring a turkey to cook in one of his Maytag ovens.
“If you’re going to spend thousands of dollars on appliances, you should at least have a chance to try them out,” said Pehkonen, an independent dealer who, in exchange for selling Maytag products exclusively, is allowed to use the name of the Newton, Iowa-based company.
By promoting “try before you buy,” retailers like Pehkonen are making shopping interactive with hopes of creating more loyal customers and achieving higher sales.
“The experiential environment they’re trying to create is the ultimate customer service,” said Jon Schallert, president of the Schallert Group Inc., a Sorrento, Fla.- based retail consulting firm. “It’s the ultimate hand-holding. It’s a great idea because it’s something the superstores can’t do.”
Retail sales are gradually shifting into two distinct camps, either extreme discount or extreme service, Schallert said.
“You either have to be price-oriented or high-service,” he said. “If you’re hanging out in the middle and doing neither, you’re probably not going to make it.”
Appliance makers aren’t the only ones embracing the concept.
Seattle’s Recreational Equipment Inc. – better known as REI – has a following among outdoor enthusiasts who pedal bicycles outside the store, try climbing shoes on an indoor climbing wall or test water filtration systems in demo areas. The store’s interactive nature attracts buyers and reduces merchandise returns, spokesman Mike Foley said.
Home improvement giant Home Depot has added tool rental centers in more than half of its stores. While the centers are popular with customers who need a product for only an afternoon, spokeswoman Kathryn Gallagher said customers frequently rent before buying.
General Motors launched a 24-hour test-drive program that allowed potential buyers to take cars home and drive them as much as 100 miles. Between April 2003 and last July, more than 766,000 people participated, resulting in 270,000 sales. The company scrapped the program to pursue other marketing plans but still considers the effort successful, said spokeswoman Elaine Redd.
Developers Charles Choi, Eddie Hosch and James Hosch, and a team of brokers at Fuller Towne & Country Properties, recently offered potential home buyers a chance to camp or “test reside” on the site of a planned subdivision in Evergreen. Eight to 10 people spent the night each of three nights, and brokers attributed at least three sales to the effort.
Pehkonen opened his first test-drive store in 1998 in Fort Collins. At the time, Maytag officials had toyed with the idea of letting customers try out their wares. They pegged Colorado and Pehkonen as their first experiment.
“What we were hearing from customers was that they were really concerned about whether the washer would be big enough to hold their favorite comforter,” said Allison Halfpop, Maytag’s manager of retail development.
The experiment was successful, and Maytag expanded the concept to other independent dealers.
Today, 45 test-drive stores – including Pehkonen’s at 8116 W. Bowles Ave. in Jefferson County – operate around the country. Maytag plans to add five more in the first quarter.
Companywide, Maytag has battled declining sales growth and has seen its stock price drop by more than half, to $19, over the past three years.
Halfpop declined to say how much of the company’s annual appliance sales are generated through the test-drive stores but said the concept is one of the company’s “top five strategic initiatives.”
Maytag isn’t the only appliance retailer encouraging customers to try its products.
KitchenAid, a Whirlpool division, launched its Insperience Studio near Atlanta in 2002.
Since 1999, Viking Range Corp. has opened eight interactive stores – known as Viking Culinary Arts Centers – with gourmet kitchens and cooking classes and another four Home Chef centers with similar offerings on a smaller scale.
While the concept is spreading among appliance retailers, it catches customers by surprise.
“I’d never thought about it before, but I like the idea,” said Linda Starkey, 39, of Littleton.
She and her husband Greg, 44, walked into Pehkonen’s Maytag store in Jefferson County to scope out appliances for a house they’re building in Missouri. After brushing up against one of Pehkonen’s working floor-model stoves and accidentally turning it on, the couple decided their cat could easily do the same thing. They chose to look at a different model.
Store employees regularly bake cookies and, on weekends, chefs do demonstrations. Pehkonen asks customers to come with anything they’re curious about – comforters, grandma’s cookie dough or the platter that won’t fit in the dishwasher.
“It was a little bit weird,” said Dalaine Bartelme, 38. The interior designer brought sweaters and other clothes to the Fort Collins store to test a stackable washer and dryer. “You can’t tell what an appliance is going to do just by looking at it.”
But not every “try before you buy” service is a sure thing.
REI once experimented with a rain room that let customers at its Seattle flagship store test weatherproof garments.
The company decided the room wasn’t effective. And when it started leaking, the company chose not to replace it.