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Ultimately, their creativity and ingenuity become an engine for innovation for our stores and for the company as a whole. I believe that driving innovation deeper into the organization will enable us to generate new growth platforms faster and help sustain the company over the long term.

For example, upscale suburban moms have the resources to purchase digital products and appreciate the many uses of technology, but they aren’t always comfortable shopping in our stores. In our labs, we added highly trained personal shopping assistants (PSAs) who are available by appointment and on a drop-in basis. While most employees work in only one product area, PSAs help moms shop for themselves and their families in all parts of our stores. When these moms used a personal shopper, their average spending increased dramatically. Moms also appreciated

touches such as the lower volumes of overhead music, race-car shopping carts and well-signed restrooms.

Boosting Our Returns

Our culture is scorecard-driven, so we track a plethora of financial and nonfinancial measures for customer centricity. For example, these stores generally have had a comparable store sales gain at least twice that of the rest of the chain. They have a gross profit rate higher than that of the rest of the chain. While the more highly trained employees and start-up expenses result in a higher expense rate, these stores have demonstrated the strong potential to expand their overall profit contribution. In addition, our measures of customer loyalty, market share and employee retention are very encouraging.