54
TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014
of the at-home RYO business came
in. Here are the company’s top best
practice strategies for the category, still
very much in play:
Roll out some clean line mer–
chandising.
Spinners and gondolas were
eliminated while slot walls were brought
in to Butt Hut of America. The floors
were redone and a visually appealing
plan started to come together.
Go wide on tobacco.
Lines of
tobacco were expanded at Butt Hut
of America. “Most other tobacco
stores feature three to four brands; we
carry 15 to 20 brands of both regular
and pipe tobacco and we put brand
families together to make it easier on
our customers to shop the selection,”
Stienecker explains.
Get fresh with tobacco.
“We are
known for fresh tobacco,” Stienecker
says. “Everybody who works for us
is very conscious of rotating stock,
so we never have dry product. If five
people get dry product, they each tell
17 people and our business is gone.”
Tobacco overstock is kept humidified at
Butt Hut of America—in the Bowling
Green store, which was previously a
bank, the walk-in humidor has history:
it was previously the bank’s vault.
Try the tobacco.
Most of the
(very loyal) employees at Butt Hut
of America have tried the different
brands of tobacco and thus are able
to provide customers with very good
product knowledge and flavor advice.
Stienecker himself subscribes to this
sales prerequisite in an even more
overarching way: “I won’t sell anything
I haven’t personally tried,” he says.
Demonstrate the tabletops.
Yes,
that’s right, Butt Hut of America
employees show customers how to
use the at-home rolling machines in-
store—legally, using shredded paper.
“They’re not using tobacco, which isn’t
allowed, but actually we have shredded
