Retailers receive national and international awards

Mike O’Hare and Dean Matthews, owners of ServiceMaster Advantage in Grand Rapids, received an Achiever Award at the international convention of ServiceMaster Clean, a subsidiary of The ServiceMaster Company, in Orlando, Florida.

Recipients of the Achiever Award must meet a variety of criteria to be nominated, including revenue, minimum growth of 10 percent and a nomination by their regional office. The recipients honored at the convention represent the top-performing franchise owners from over 4,000 businesses worldwide.

East Lansing’s Saper Galleries and Custom Framing has been named one of the nation’s top 100 art and framing retailers. The honors were announced recently in Decor magazine.

The U.S. Small Business Administration and St. Louis Business Journal provided an objective, outside-the-industry viewpoint in evaluating award contenders. The top 100 art and framing retailers were selected from a pool of at least 17,000 retail framers and as many galleries across the nation.

Gift catalog and marketing company Ideation, Inc., Ann Arbor, continues an expansion program headed by President Tom Ungrodt, who assumed management of the organization after the passing of his father, “Skip” Ungrodt, in January of this year.

Assuming the responsibilities of Controller and Human Resource Management is Chris Gallup. Sue Scott, a former buyer with Ideation, is returning in that capacity after managing the Michigan Gift Mart for three years. Teri Price has moved from Ideation headquarters as an Associate Buyer to Store Manager of Dayspring Gifts in Chelsea, one of the company-owned retail gift stores.

Fris Office Supply in Holland has opened a new outlet called Fris Office Express in the back of The Book Shoppe, a new retailer in downtown Zeeland. “We have a lot of customers in the Zeeland area, and this was a nice situation to expand our services,” said owner Jay Fris. The smaller location will offer the most common of Fris’s full line of office supplies and will track what customers buy and request to determine futures stocking decisions.

Kean’s Store, a specialty retailer in Mason, celebrated its 75th anniversary in late September with a sale, refreshments, prize drawings and other festivities. The store, originally known as “Kean’s Five & Dime,” is an old-fashioned variety store and has been owned and managed by the Kean family for all 75 years.

Holland clothing store jb and me will relocate from one downtown Holland location to a larger and more prominent one less than a block down the street. The move will nearly triple the store’s floor space and allow the merchant to expand all its offerings, including children’s and women’s clothes and home furnishings.

The United Food and Commercial Workers reached a tentative agreement with Meijer, Inc., Walker, to boost pay by 13 percent by 2007 while health and fringe benefits are maintained. The deal would make the 36,000 workers at 78 Michigan stores the highest-paid retail workers in the Midwest, according to both union and company.

In addition, Meijer plans to open a 194,000-foot supercenter at the Tel-Twelve shopping center in Southfield, site of a former Kmart. Tel-Twelve is one of suburban Detroit’s most heavily traveled retail locations.

Lawn and garden retailer Frank’s Nursery & Crafts, Inc. plans to shorten its name to Frank’s Nursery. It no longer sells crafts since emerging from bankruptcy in 2002, and it faces competition from national retailers for its lawn and garden products. It plans to offer higher-quality flowers, plants and shrubs at competitive prices, as well as to expand its line of home decor products, making it less dependent on seasonal merchandise.

Kmart Corp., Troy, has hired three top executives to help define its vision. Lisa Schultz is senior vice president and chief creative officer, in charge of store merchandising; Bruce Johnson is senior vice president of supply chain and operations; and Janet Kelly is senior vice present and chief administrative officer, leading the human resource department. Kmart’s search for a chief merchant is ongoing.

The Great Indoors, a home-furnishings chain owned by Sears, will transform its Shelby Township location into the company’s only Great Indoors Outlet store. After closing several stores in other states, The Great Indoors will have 18 stores nationwide, including one in Novi.

The Home Depot has begun installation of real-time, digital video surveillance technology in all of its nearly 1,600 stores throughout North America. The new system will employ approximately 40,000 video cameras to provide far greater monitoring capability than the current analog system. The new technology will help deter criminal activity and provide police and prosecutors with enhanced investigative tools.

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