Home Bio Articles Books Photography Awards Past Programs Current Programs Contact/Agent
		Travel Outdoors Business Conservation Profiles Press Issues
				“Isn't That Convenient?” Jim Mitchell claims to know what makes consumers stop or go. Dallas Life Magazine By Phil H. Shook "If your store looks ratty, you better be selling barbecue," says the man with the microphone at the front of the bus. Before the tour bus has traveled a block, Mr. Mitchell has launched into a dissertation on the wants, needs, feelings and spending patterns of Bubbas, Grandpas, Females, Ethnics and other subsets of folks who use convenience stores. His audience of store owners and gasoline marketers has chosen to leave the cantilevered caverns of the Loews Anatole hotel and the trade show routine for a field trip to area quick-stops, car washes and gasoline stations. What they're after - and what they're getting from architect Jim Mitchell - are ideas on how to make their stores more attractive to consumers. Normally they would pay for them. A nonstop talker with a seemingly endless string of ideas, Mr. Mitchell operates a small, high-priced architectural design firm in Irving. It specializes in designing and redesigning convenience stores, which have seen tough times lately. Before the tour bus has traveled a block, Mr. Mitchell has launched into a dissertation on the wants, needs, feelings and spending patterns of Bubbas, Grandpas, Females, Ethnics and other subsets of folks who use convenience stores. He doesn't mince words: "Don't have Bubba selling to Yuppies - the Yuppies won't want to touch anything," he says. And: "A unisex bathroom in a convenience store is a men's room. Because women won't go in it." At the fist stop, an Arlington convenience store, Mr. Mitchell is hardly through the door before he spots a problem. Management recently discontinued a line of Vietnamese foods, he says, and the store's lonely looking shelves, neat and undisturbed, are a sure sign that the area's sizable Vietnamese community is now shopping elsewhere. Oblivious to the sales clerk, Mr. Mitchell continues his critique. "The last thing in the world you ever want to do in retailing is to have your products lined up in perfect little rows. Customers won't want to disturb them." A onetime professional skater who toured with the Ice Capades, Mr. Mitchell has spent recent years studying the habits and traits of quick-stop consumers. He is considered a maverick in the highly competitive convenience store industry, where smaller regional chains, major oil companies and struggling giants like 7-Eleven and Stop N Go are engaged in corner-to-corner combat. One of the most expensive firms in the field, Jim Mitchell & Associates creates environments that sell products. According to Mr. Mitchell, a store's design is nothing more than an extension of marketing strategy. He says many of the larger chains are having trouble because they have stubbornly held to outdated strategies. "As long as white Anglo-Saxon males dominate the retailing business, then we are going to see our business ebb away," he says, because their long-held strategy to target only Baby Boomers doesn't work anymore. "They believed that if you shoot at the Baby Boomers, you are going to hit so many people that it doesn't matter. So they merchandised the store the same in Chicago as they did in Dalton, Ga."But what worked well in the '60s and '70s," he says, "started to fail in the '80s" and is a total failure today. He adds that many of the bigger chains still aren't sensitive to neighborhood demographics. "They did not recognize that our society is splintering and that we no longer are the melting po t-that we are becoming a land of minorities." Although clients hire him for his market savvy and creativity, Mr. Mitchell says many of his concepts are basic common sense. "If I am going to put a store in a strong Bubba neighborhood, why would I put an Asian running it?" Mr. Mitchell asks. "Why not put a Bubba running it" He says a store will be "wildly successful" if the counter staff fits the same profile as the customers. Every one of the Irving firm's new clients - mostly medium-size convenience-store chains - must fill out a four-page questionnaire that lists almost 50 different customer "lifestyle demographics" categories. The descriptions range from the much-analyzed Young Urban Professionals to the less-publicized Prairie People, whom Mr. Mitchell identifies as "older people living in small towns of the Great Plains." Suburban Gentry buy differently from Comfortable Suburbanites; Fixed-Income Blues are not the same as customers categorized as Appalachian Trail. To help clients visualize the different traits of these consumer groups, Mr. Mitchell provides pithy descriptions. Single Starters are young adults, "owners of cinder-block bookcases just beginning their careers." The Leave It to Beavers are "TV's June and Ward Cleaver - as we remember them middle managers in new suburban housing." The High Rise Blues cope with slow elevators and packed laundry rooms, while the Condos and Palms set enjoys fast elevators. Mr. Mitchell closely guards specifics of his research, including lists of specific products favored by each group." If some one tells me the Leave It to Beavers are here, I know what they buy and I know how many feet of shelving it is going to take to fulfill those needs," Mr. Mitchell says. "Being one of the highest-priced designers in the business has a number of positive effects," Mr. Mitchell says. "Customers willing to pay what we charge are more likely to want something creative, they are more likely to run it well and they are more likely to build exactly what you design." Mr. Mitchell says no store designed by his firm has failed to reach expectations. "When we started six years ago, there weren?t many convenience sotres doing $30,000 a week in volume. There are a lot of them now." Chains from Oregon to Florida have sought out his firm. On a job in rural Kentucky, Mr. Mitchell was greeted one morning with the rich aroma of hickory smoke and green leaves. He suggested that a store in Barbersville, Ky., install a giant rock-faced fireplace in the entranceway. A hickory log fire now greets customers as they enter the store. "When the hill people come in and smell that fire, their comfort level just soars," Mr. Mitchell says. "They don't feel like city folk came down here and put in a store." To underline his point, he changed the name from G&M Oil Co.Food Store to Crossroads. Business has quadrupled since the makeover, he says. After making five trips to Pennsylvania without seeing the sun, he designed a store for the Sheetz chain that would "bring in a lot of light and give (customers) a lift -create an oasis of sunshine." Mr. Mitchell's design has helped the company reach average sales of $24,000 a week at new stores, says Louie Sheetz, vice president of Sheetz Convenience Stores. "We have never had stores generate sales above the company average as quickly as these did." The Altoona, Pa., company, operates 163 locations in four states. Tulsa-based Git-N-Go, operator of 84 stores in Oklahoma and Missouri, has used the Irving design firm for about nine years. "He gave our stores a new look with atriums and gondolas set off at an angle, a major departure that has helped in merchandising our products," says Git-N-Go president Earl Mead. A native of Kansas, Mr. Mitchell has lived and worked in Texas for 23 years. In 1973 he founded a design firm in Irving under the name Programmed Interiors, with two people working out of a garage. Over 13 years, the company grew to a staff of 107 with projects going in every state and 39 foreign countries. It was during this period, Mr. Mitchell says, that the firm started using demographics to create attractive shopping environments. Back then, clients included such giants as Safeway, Kroger and Randalls stores. With all the success came some serious growing pains. "It became an absolute nightmare," Mr. Mitchell says, describing the amount of time that had to be spent with attorneys, bankers and personnel issues. "It was an extremely successful disaster doing well over $5 million a year." When someone offered to buy the company, Mr. Mitchell sold out. He and his department heads started another company - determined never to get big again. The five-person firm now does between $600,000 and $700,000 a year in design work, 10 percent of what it used to do. "I will never make the money I used to make, but I have the time and I am doing better work now than I have ever done," Mr. Mitchell says. January 31, 1993