Wal-Mart seeks upscale customers

Under pressure to boost growth, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is retooling its strategy to pry more money out of the hands of wealthier, more style-conscious customers by offering a broader array of more fashionable goods.

Wal-Mart Stores USA CEO Eduardo Castro-Wright said Tuesday that the world’s largest retailer, whose famous tag-line is “Always Low Prices,” would unveil an array of higher-priced lawn chairs and fluffy towels, as well as trendier clothing, including a new hip-hop brand for young males called Exsto.

The goal with Exsto, which will hit the shelves in July, is to mimic the success of Metro 7, which is targeted at young women and has scored well since its launch last year.

Other moves outlined by Castro-Wright, who spoke to about 70 journalists on the first of a two-day media conference, include reducing merchandise inventory to reduce clutter, and relocating key regional executives to the areas for which they are responsible, in order to better tailor stores to the communities they serve.

Wal-Mart held its first media conference last April under the twin pressures of sluggish sales growth and bad publicity. A year later, Wal-Mart is still struggling to regain the growth rates of years past.

On Tuesday, company executives said they were trying to understand their customer even better and have segmented them into three different groups — the loyalist, the selective shopper and the skeptic.

The loyalist shopper shops at Wal-Mart stores 63 times a year, and the skeptic much less so. But the company’s biggest focus is the selective shopper, who shops 46 times a year and buys only basic goods, according to John Fleming, executive vice president of marketing.

As part of its merchandising efforts, Wal-Mart is improving the baby departments, offering organic cotton baby clothes under its store brand George. In January, the company relaunched its furniture departments to offer more compelling merchandise.

•Sikorsky Aircraft announced a nationwide campaign Tuesday to recruit more than 300 engineers to meet growing demand for the company’s military and civilian helicopters and services.

Sikorsky, a Hartford-based subsidiary of United Technologies Corp., plans job fairs over the next few months in several states to fill engineering positions at company and subsidiary facilities in Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Alabama and New York.

Sikorsky expects to double revenue between 2003-2008 and significantly increase aircraft deliveries .