Bath Junkie Hits Road at Sam’s Club; Retail Sales Slip
by October 20, 2008 12:00 am 94 views
A successful Fayetteville-born franchise is taking its show on the road at Sam’s Clubs nationwide.
Bath Junkie, founded in 1996 by Judy Zimmer and daughter Jocelyn Murray and franchised in 2000, now has 70 stores across the country and plans to have around five more by this Christmas.
With luck, the pair will even have their first store off the mainland with a planned location in Puerto Rico. They recently opened an in-store location in Dillard’s at the Northwest Arkansas Mall and are even eyeing northern Europe in the future.
Bath Junkie describes itself as a “soda fountain” for bath products. Customers can select their own colors and more than 200 scents and watch them mixed in the store.
On Oct. 9, they set up in the Fayetteville Sam’s and were only scheduled to stay through Oct. 12 but were invited to stay through Oct. 19.
They’ll be at the Bentonville Sam’s from Oct. 23 through Nov. 2 and then can go anywhere they’d like, Murray said.
“They’ve left it up to us to decide,” Murray said. “But they are also going to give us lots of information on where we should go.”
Bath Junkie scaled down some of its products for its in-store program at Sam’s and scaled others upward. Obviously all 200 fragrances aren’t available, so they are featuring their best-selling blends and products at discounts to members.
For example, a four-ounce product that costs $11.75 in the store is being offered for $9.88 at Sam’s.
In keeping with the jumbo-sized offerings available at Sam’s, Bath Junkie up-sized as well with four-pound packages of bath crystals it usually sells a pound at a time.
“We’re so excited,” Murray said. “We were thrilled when Sam’s tapped us for that. It brings us a theater and the Sam’s members have been a lot of fun.”
Murray said they’ve set up in Sam’s near the front of the store to catch customers before they reach the club’s employees offering complimentary food samples.
“We’ve been offering free hand spa treatments by telling people, ‘Hey, you can have clean hands before you eat those free samples,'” she said.