Petsmart 2009 Annual Report Download - page 11

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Offer superior customer service. Our emphasis on the customer is designed to provide an unparalleled
shopping experience every time they visit our stores. Using a detailed associate learning curriculum and role-
playing techniques, we educate store associates to identify customer needs and provide appropriate solutions. We
measure our success in every store, and a portion of the annual incentive program for the store management team is
linked to customer satisfaction. By providing pet parents with expertise and solutions, we believe we are
strengthening our relationships with customers, building loyalty and enhancing our leading market position, thus
differentiating ourselves from grocery and other mass retailers.
Focus on operating excellence. Our commitment to operating excellence emphasizes retail basics like store
cleanliness, short check-out lines, a strong in-stock position, an effective supply chain and the care of the pets in our
stores, which allows us to provide a consistently superior shopping experience. This focus on operating excellence
simplifies processes, makes our stores more efficient and easier to operate and allows associates to be more
productive. We continually seek opportunities to strengthen our merchandising capabilities allowing us to provide a
differentiated product assortment, including pet specialty channel exclusive products and our proprietary brand
offerings, to drive innovative solutions and value to our customers.
Expand our pet services offerings. Based on net services sales, we are North America’s leading specialty
provider of pet services, which includes professional grooming, training, boarding, and day camp. Full-service
veterinary hospitals are available in 752 of our stores, through our partnership with Medical Management
International, Inc. and other third parties in Canada. Pet services are an integral part of our strategy, and we
are focused on driving profitable growth in our services business. We believe services further differentiate us from
our competitors, drive traffic and repeat visits to our stores, provide cross-selling opportunities, allow us to forge a
strong relationship with our customers, increase transaction size and enhance operating margins.
Add stores and provide the right store format to meet the needs of our customers. Our expansion strategy
includes increasing our share in existing multi-store markets, penetrating new multi-store and single-store markets,
and achieving operating efficiencies and economies of scale in distribution, information systems, procurement,
marketing, and store operations. We continually evaluate our store format to ensure we are meeting the needs and
expectations of our customers, while providing a return on investment to our stockholders. A store format that
emphasizes our highly differentiated products and pet services offerings, when combined with our other strategic
initiatives, will generally contribute a higher comparable store sales growth, profitability and return on investment.
We believe these strategic initiatives will continue to drive comparable store sales, or sales in stores open at
least one year, and overall sales growth, and allow us to focus on managing capital and leveraging costs, and drive
product margins to produce profitability and return on investment for our stockholders.
Our Stores
Our stores are generally located at sites co-anchored by strong destination mass merchandisers and typically
are in or near major regional shopping centers. We are engaged in an ongoing expansion program, opening new
stores in both new and existing markets and relocating existing stores. Store activity was as follows:
2009 2008 2007
Store count at beginning of year ................................ 1,112 1,008 908
New, relocated and acquired stores opened ........................ 45 112 115
Stores closed .............................................. (8) (8) (15)
Store count at end of year ..................................... 1,149 1,112 1,008
Distribution
Our distribution network and information systems are designed to optimize store inventory, drive the efficient
use of store labor, facilitate a high in-stock position and promote high distribution center productivity. We currently
ship product to our stores in full truckloads, some of which contain multiple store deliveries. We operate two kinds
of distribution centers: forward distribution centers and combination centers. Our forward distribution centers
handle consumable products that require rapid replenishment, while our combination distribution centers handle
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