Download PDFWhilst attending the annual summit in Dallas in late September, we were delighted to win one of only 9 supplier awards – our award was in the Art and Framing category. In particular, Michaels referenced several aspects of our strong partnership: Exclusive product development through the W&N Studio Collection, private label product development and our support in developing a trial concept store in East Hanover, NJ, that resulted in several learnings that have been rolled out in the 2019 Fine Art reset.
Colart at the awards ceremony: Dennis van Schie CEO, Gail Pasquier CCO, Steve Chamberlain Commercial Director – North America, Sarah Clark Marketing Director – North America, Barry Davis – Art & Craft Sales Director – North America.
From Michaels (left to right): Philo Pappas – President Merchandising & Supply Chain, Rich Gartmann – VP GMM Art Supplies & Frames, Laura Denk – SVP Merchandising, Product Development, Pricing & Merchandise Finance
Steve Chamberlain comments: “As the worlds’ largest retailer of art supplies our relationship with Michaels is of huge strategic importance to us in North America and right around the globe. Pretty much everyone in Colart is involved in the Michaels partnership in some way such is the scale of this customer. It was great that Dennis and Gail could join Sarah, Barry and myself on stage to receive the award but I look on this as a reward for everyone in the Colart family. As Michaels, like many other large customers, continues to look to develop more uniqueness vs their competition it’s pleasing to see the recognition we received for developing new ideas. The W&N Studio Collection supports our brand strategy of taking W&N further into graphic art whilst the East Hanover trial allowed us to showcase our expertise through our Global Shopper Marketing team leveraging ‘best practice’ from other retailers around the world. Finally private label, when a strategic fit, allows us become the true category experts for Michaels. A big thank you to all involved in these initiatives in particular as well as the support from Colart more widely with Michaels every single day”.
A couple of key themes at the summit were both how Michaels want to get much better at digital through leveraging customer data and developing a fine art concept ‘store within a store’. We followed on from the summit with a ‘top to top’ meeting with the Michaels CEO and their senior management team and focused on these key initiatives.
We showcased to Michaels our ability to develop a true 360 activation campaign together leveraging both our experience and expertise to drive increased profitable sales through much better consumer engagement. Fine art has been identified as one of only two ‘wow’ categories that Michaels believe they can really grow their market share in and we are absolutely seen as one of only 2-3 partners involved in developing the fine art concept store – with 20 test stores scheduled to be rolled out in early 2020!
After a great 2018 and 2019 it looks like 2020 will be just as challenging and exciting for us all!