Retail Minded Field Report
Henschel-Steinau opens up its new design department at its headquarters in Allendale, N.J. Full size
Designers Amy Schultz and Drew Sholl in the Henschel-Steinau design department. Full size
Drew Scognamiglio works on a project in Henschel-Steinau’s updated model shop. Full size
The company produces all prototypes in its model shop. Full size
Allendale, N.J. – While it isn’t straying from its roots as a designer and manufacturer of temporary to permanent in-store displays, Henschel-Steinau Inc. has put an increased focus on the retail arena in the past few years. The company is under new management since a group of 11 employee investors bought it in the summer of 2008.
A move to new headquarters in Allendale signal another big change, but according to Gary Forman, president and CEO, the company is poised to move forward while doing what it knows best.
“We don’t want to move away from the consumer packaged goods side — that’s been the bread-and-butter of our business for all these years,” Forman says, “but since our industry is moving in all different directions, we’re taking the initiative into our own hands, deciding what we want to develop, and we’re doing many more retail items as opposed to being called in on an assignment to do strictly a display.” The company maintains a large library of stock tooling for injection-molded displays.
Forman, who has been with the company for more than 35 years, 30 of which he had been a partner in a minority capacity, says these strategic initiatives began before the change in ownership but he believes the new owners, all of whom are also veterans with the company, have even more of a vested interest going forward.
Michael Luberto, executive vice president of creative services, who has also spent 25 years with the company, says the creative end of the business has benefited most from the move to its new headquarters.
Formerly in three separate buildings in its Englewood, N.J., offices, he says with all teams comprising the design staff under one roof now (as well as everyone else within the organization), it has “led to a lot of advantages, especially in terms of communication between the different departments.”
The design department, he adds, has begun to transition its knowledge and expertise in the retail environment more into the retail sector of its business and is concentrating more than ever on working directly with retailers. “We’re retraining our staff in a way that communicates that the retail environment has always been important to us, but now it has become our lifeblood,” Luberto says.
Being in stores is even more critical now in understanding the environment, he explains. “Going out and looking into what’s going on in the field and talking to retailers — that’s all part of how we structured our design department. We have to be out in the field looking for the problems because if we don’t get to them first, someone else will,” Luberto says.
Maintaining a balance between its work with the CPGs and retailers is the goal, he agrees, but the big push to gain knowledge in retail areas that it hadn’t had before is simply a function of being proactive in the industry and following trends in retailing.
“Retailers are gaining more influence in terms of what the CPGs are putting in their environment,” says Luberto. “We’re working our way toward the retailers because they’re gaining influence. They’re deciding what’s going to go into their stores and we felt that a good balance for us would be to still work with our CPG partners but then expand our horizons and our knowledge.”
The company’s EZ Load category management products have been in the field for more than two years, but according to Luberto, it will be a strong focus for the company going forward.
“As we sell it into retailer locations we’re also picking up on other things.” Most notably, the company is working on an aisle reinvention right now in the baby food aisle.
“There is high labor for retailers in the baby food aisle and we wanted to clean it up and reinvent the area,” Luberto says. “We’ve developed a gravity-feed roller system, which is a combination spring-loaded system using our EZ Load and EZ Roll systems, to encompass the whole category,” which he says translates to labor savings for the retailer and stronger brand identification for consumers.
“We’re merchandising 10 or 15 different categories in stores now with several thousand facings,” says Forman, adding that several new systems are in the works. “That was unheard of in the old days. Back then, if we put in a spring-fed display, we might get two or four facings in a store. Now we’re getting thousands of facings because of what we’re able to provide for retailers.”
Because it understood that retailers generally don’t want to wait to test a concept, Forman says the company made significant investments in the new initiatives like EZ Load and EZ Roll. “So as we show it to retailers, we can be in test with it a couple of weeks later. Our systems have been growing from what we see in each test and each production run that we do and we build on that business. We make more tooling, make more sizes available, and make changes when need be. We want to learn from what we’re doing out there.”
Forman says the systems are designed within its facility, all models and test tools are created in-house, the company handles installation and gets feedback. “We’re doing tests with several major retailers where we’re getting real feedback in writing that shows how these systems perform at retail, where the savings are, and whether or not they increase sales. That’s been something we’ve always thrived on — learning as much as we can so we can help our clients.”
Within its new, higher-tech facility, Luberto says the company has an upgraded corrugated cutting table and a “completely renovated” shop. “We’re overhauling our equipment, updating and upscaling that part of our business,” he says.
