Another Staples strategy is a “strong commitment to be in stock” on merchandise, he added, compared with what he called the policies “of some of our competitors” to sell supplies at sale prices for only a short time and then not restock them.
Looking at back-to-school as “a long season,” as Mr. Parneros put it, rather than a short-term opportunity is at the heart of the Staples plans.
For instance, the retailer is bringing back its Back to School Savings Pass, which costs $10 and offers shoppers 15 percent off the prices of many kinds of merchandise through mid-September.
It makes sense because “most customers buy multiple times,” Mr. Parneros said.
That is underlined in a new commercial that promotes the pass. The spot features the 1980s song “Just Can’t Get Enough” and seeks to demonstrate that shopping for back-to-school is no flash in the pan.
The commercial shows the beating that students give supplies like notebooks, pencils, pens and backpacks as time goes by. Notebooks get wet. Pencils are sharpened down to almost nothing. Paper gets made into airplanes instead of being used to do homework.
And a boy playfully puts two pencils up his nostrils as the girl sitting next to him in class blanches.
“It’s guaranteed they’ll go through a lot” of supplies, an announcer says. “That’s why you get guaranteed savings on back-to-school at Staples.”
Staples plans to advertise about as much as it did last year, Mr. Parneros said, with a slight shift in media toward newer areas like online and social.
Another Staples strategy will be what Mr. Parneros describes as the “endless aisle,” in the form of touchscreens in departments that stock products like printers and computers where customers can look up items that are not on display.
Staples, which is based in Framingham, Mass., is also counting a lot on technology to draw in customers for back-to-school 2012.
Beginning this weekend, Mr. Parneros said, stores should start to get supplies of the new Nexus 7 tablet from Google.
“This is getting a lot of activity” already in pre-orders, he said, adding that Staples will sell an eight-gigabyte version for $199 and a 12-gigabyte version for $249.
There is also a promotion centered on the arrival in the fall of the Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft, he added, with a likely introduction at the end of October.
Mr. Parneros spoke with reporters at a Staples store that opened in the spring at Fifth Avenue and 39th Street in Manhattan, where passers-by are greeted with a large, revolving version of the Staples “easy” button in a window.
He gave the reporters a tour of the store, showing them various school supplies that are on sale this week, a Nexus 7 tablet and a novelty item called a locker chandelier – a tiny plastic version of a crystal chandelier with LED lights.
The ad agency that created the new Staples commercial is McCann Erickson New York, part of the McCann Erickson Worldwide division of the McCann Worldgroup, which is owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies.
2012年7月10日 星期二
2012年5月30日 星期三
Students build devices to help Ugandan village
The students from Madison-Oneida BOCES are heating up marshmallows. But this is not for a future camping trip or afternoon snack. They designed and created a number of solar powered devices.
"It's called a frenel lens solar cooker. This lens came out of a project TV," said student Ryan Thorna.
The students in Engineering Science, Carpentry and Auto Body Repair programs spent most of the school year coming up with designs for Solar Powered generators and solar cookers.
They partnered with the organization E4P, which helps needy African villages. They developed ways to help the people in one Ugandan village who have very little to do daily tasks like cook and have clean water. They used some recycled materials like wood others are fairly easy to obtain like tin and aluminum.
Kaliegh Larmer said, "Basically, the sun hits the smooth surface and underneath is grooved and it focuses the heat into one focal point and it very quickly, if it's sunny, can heat the water or whatever else is in front of it."
This solar generator can provide electricity to schools that rely on natural light.
"In their school they need light bulbs. So they can study and this can run a 60 watt incandescent light bulb fornine9 hours and that would translate to more like three or four fluorescent lights," said Tracy O’Hern.
Now that their senior projects are complete E4P will take some of the prototypes with them to Uganda, show the people there how they work so they can replicate them.
E4P Executive Director and Founder Pamela Mandsager said, "Something like this, they're using resources that they have easily available that they can purchase very cheaply and they can use their own manpower to create and mass produce for the community, which means it'll be used."
They figured out how to design something and make it work, but their instructor says it's a lesson not just in engineering but in humanity.
Professional engineer and Madison-Oneida BOCES Engineering instructor David Hale, said, "Students from our community come together from different backgrounds, work together for not just for helping each other, for helping people they never met halfway around the globe."
"It's called a frenel lens solar cooker. This lens came out of a project TV," said student Ryan Thorna.
The students in Engineering Science, Carpentry and Auto Body Repair programs spent most of the school year coming up with designs for Solar Powered generators and solar cookers.
They partnered with the organization E4P, which helps needy African villages. They developed ways to help the people in one Ugandan village who have very little to do daily tasks like cook and have clean water. They used some recycled materials like wood others are fairly easy to obtain like tin and aluminum.
Kaliegh Larmer said, "Basically, the sun hits the smooth surface and underneath is grooved and it focuses the heat into one focal point and it very quickly, if it's sunny, can heat the water or whatever else is in front of it."
This solar generator can provide electricity to schools that rely on natural light.
"In their school they need light bulbs. So they can study and this can run a 60 watt incandescent light bulb fornine9 hours and that would translate to more like three or four fluorescent lights," said Tracy O’Hern.
Now that their senior projects are complete E4P will take some of the prototypes with them to Uganda, show the people there how they work so they can replicate them.
E4P Executive Director and Founder Pamela Mandsager said, "Something like this, they're using resources that they have easily available that they can purchase very cheaply and they can use their own manpower to create and mass produce for the community, which means it'll be used."
They figured out how to design something and make it work, but their instructor says it's a lesson not just in engineering but in humanity.
Professional engineer and Madison-Oneida BOCES Engineering instructor David Hale, said, "Students from our community come together from different backgrounds, work together for not just for helping each other, for helping people they never met halfway around the globe."
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