Darren Jackson: We may have thought of the Commercial customer as an additional product offering or an accessory in our business. As opposed to beginning to understand which commercial customer we want to win with.
If we can simply hold on to them we can tell within our own data our comps grow double digits. In our DIY business, all of us talk about the Hispanic customer and the growth potential, the margin potential and everything and AutoZone has done a better job than many of us in the industry.
Elwyn Murray: On DIY from a Hispanic standpoint, we see that as about 15% of the population growing 20% a year and twice as likely to DIY it’s a missed opportunity for us so we clearly see that and are targeting that.
Part of our brand campaign is creating a platform that resonates with these targeted audiences and also provides a relevant platform. We talk more specifically about parts and parts availability and some of the functional attributes that we will be enhancing.
From a Commercial standpoint clearly to date we have pursued that opportunistically rather than strategically and a lot of our Commercial segments are the smaller bay operations and clearly we think in order to grow we are going to need to win with some larger bay operations. That is what will become a strategic focus of ours.
Tony Cristello (BB&T Capital Markets): At the store level, how is morale and how is the training and approach being transitioned to focus more on that customer?
Jim Wade: A lot of the things around the parts initiative simplifying the front room and a lot of other things that we have done. We have heard a lot of good feedback from our stores in regard to how that’s being accepted. We are well positioned and our team is ready to respond to the initiatives that we have underway.
Darren Jackson: We are real early in terms of the tools to help our store teams, our DM’s our RVP’s to actually begin to manage a business and have tools around the business to do a better job with the customer.
We are working on tools today and capabilities that will allow us to assess how our traffic moving. We are building top 10 customer reports so we can begin to have conversations all the way down to our Commercial pros to our DCSM’s to the field teams about conversations that speak to how are you doing with your top 10 customers because they are very valuable to us on a store by store basis.
Gregory Melich (Morgan Stanley): How are you looking at closing the gap between yourself and the industry?
Darren Jackson: Getting availability right and the related supply chain that goes with getting availability right and the custom mix right and our team members have been telling us that for a while but that is at the top of the list.
We have to find a way to expand our imagination around what we can do with the car. You bet we want to win under the hood, we want to win under the car and under the glass too, but there are other things that we can be doing for everyone.
Scot Ciccarelli (RBC): If you had the parts available as you want them what do you think the impact on the comps would be today?
Jim Wade; We know they would be better. We do know from history that we are in the parts business and the more availability that we have in our stores and have close to our customers the better our sales are going to be.
Scot Ciccarelli (RBC): Is there a way to address the traffic issues on the DIY side?
Darren Jackson: Over the last couple years we have seen a challenge in the DIY business in part we would say we are not reaching some of the most important customers and our attempt to go to www.KeepTheWheelsTurning.com is to reach those customers on an emotional level and on a pragmatic level as to what we are selling.
It’s real early we are cautiously excited about some of the markets that have started to lay out the new ad campaign to team members have given us good feedback. I think that is a good first step and I think actually focusing on the customers we want to win with and target is the next big step.
We know traditionalists shop with us 15 times a year which is much higher than other types of customers so again figuring out how we communicate who we want to win with and building our team members to be successful with them is how you build traffic. It’s going to take time because we’ve got to win them back.
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