Campmor

Campmor is an outdoor recreation equipment retailer established in Bogota, New Jersey in 1978 by Morton Jarashow. Known for its wide selection of outdoor clothing, camping, backpacking, bicycling and water sports equipment, Campmor derives more than eighty percent of its sales from its [http://www.campmor.com website] . In addition to its online and mail-order business, Campmor also operates one retail store in Paramus, New Jersey. Its warehousing and mail-/web-order facilities, previously housed in Wenko Park in Upper Saddle River, NJ, as well as in the former Yugo company headquarters, across the street, are now located on Corporate Drive in Mahwah, NJ in a brandy-new, custom built facility.

Retail Service Model

Campmor is unique within its industry for its retail service model, which places particular emphasis on employee knowledge rather than employee versatility. The employees of Campmor's retail store are often thought of as the "brain trust" of the company, and are trained extensively. This allows for arguably better service to customers, and also saves a great deal of time and effort where mail- or web-order questions are involved: whereas other outdoor retailers would spend a great deal of time perusing the same information sources available to the customer, at Campmor, the inquiry is routed to the retail store department that would most likely be involved, where it is answered by people who not only have training from the manufacturers of most products in the department, but who, more often than not, are avid users of said products.

Another difference between Campmor's service model and the rest of the industry is its extensive use of web sales with relatively minimal emphasis on the actual retail location. This also partially accounts for the perceived difference in pricing between website or catalog prices and the prices in the retail store. The difference in pricing, usually lower in the retail store, is based on the lower overhead involved in warehousing and selling in person versus through the mail-order catalog or website.

30th Anniversary

Campmor has been in business for 30 years as of 2008, and is celebrating by bringing out its old "bear logo" on the most recent catalog, Summer 2008.

Internal Culture

Campmor employees, often self-referentially known as "Campmorons", consider themselves, in their own words, to be a "bunch of crazies". The internal culture of the retail store is what one would expect of most US retail establishments, but with a slight twist. For some reason, certain portions of the retail store attract more intellectual characters. In one exemplary case, this led to the 2006 founding of the Campmor School of the Humanities, a self-described literary discussion group. The founding members of this group include Philip Brophy, Kent Kosack, Michael Lees, and Paul Von Berg (deceased).

Other hallmarks of the retail store's internal culture include the term "Campless" as a derogatory name for the store, referring to the fact that employees almost always have to work on Saturdays, and therefore have minimal weekend time for any real camping trips, and also Saturday bagels, an institution put forth by the store management to stem the surge of employee resentment on Saturdays, consisting of a huge spread of bagels and toppings put forth in the break room.

References to Christmas Carols at any point in the year are frowned upon, as the store's management takes it as a point of honor that it must be played over the PA system every business day from Black Friday to December 24th.

Campmor also has a hybrid training program, which is departmentally based. New employees are assigned a department, usually one that they expressed an interest in at hiring, and are set into a kind of apprenticeship there, being taught by the other members of the department (both directly and by observing sales behavior), overseen by the department head. This is supplemented by clinics put on by industry manufacturers/wholesalers on a spring/fall schedule.

Another common reference is to "corporate", or "up north", referring to the company headquarters and warehouse.

Campmor's internal clock is set to 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM and 1:00 PM to 9:30 PM shifts every weekday, except mondays, when employees are expected in at 8:30 AM to help stock the "transfer" of items from the warehouse in Mahwah to the retail store in Paramus. Most of Campmor's employees pride themselves on working for one of the last stores in Paramus to have a reasonable saturday closing time of 7:00 PM. Lunches can be 30, 45, or 60 minutes long on weekdays, and 30 or 45 minutes long on a saturday.

Given that New Jersey employment law stipulates that retail employees must be allowed a break on the clock, it is also common to hear someone "calling for a ten". This is when an employee will call the floor manager and ask for a ten minute break. If the department in question has coverage by other employees, permission for this break will be granted.

Internal Hierarchy

Campmor's retail internal hierarchy is very closely related to chronological seniority. The head of the retail store is the store manager, currently Brian Olsson. Beneath him is a staff of several (usually no more than five) managers, all of whom have areas of general responsibility within the store comprising several departments. There are normally two or three customer service managers, who are parallel to these managers, but whose duties also include overseeing the customer service desk at the front of the store, and also overseeing the cash registers. Beneath the managers are the department heads, who have executive power in their departments, but who also collaborate with the buyers at "corporate" to figure out what products to bring in to the store, and the most effective means to sell them by. Finally, the majority of the peons in the store are sales associates who are beholden to all of the above, and who may specialize in one or more departments. The most valuable of the sales associates have been employed by Campmor for a number of years, and can "work the whole store", meaning that they can sell with expertise in any department. Most sales associates are avid outdoor recreation and gear fanatics, who will hike, camp, boat, etc. at the drop of a hat, or the ending of a shift.

External links

* [http://www.campmor.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?storeId=226&catalogId=40000000226&langId=-1 The Campmor website]