2023 Harps SW ROY

The Shelby Report of the Southwest salutes

2023 Southwest Retailer of the Year Company’s culture sparks further growth with recent acquisitions Harps Food Stores had “a bunch of irons in the fire in 2023,” according to Chairman and CEO Kim Eskew. Those “irons” are among the reasons the Springdale, Arkansas-based company has been named The Shelby Report of the Southwest’s 2023 Retailer of the Year.

Harps added 34 net new locations and moved into two additional states through recent acquisitions. Eskew said about 40 stores were acquired, with some closed and others consolidated. “After the smoke cleared, we had 34 additional locations.”

Harps has more than doubled in size since 2019, primarily through acquisitions.

“I think every grocer knows that sometimes making the acquisition is the easy part,” Eskew said. “What you do once you’ve acquired the stores is the hard part. That’s bringing those folks into your culture and getting them to adopt that culture and to change their operation to conform to the way that you do business. And that’s hard.”

In fiscal year 2023, Harps expanded its footprint into southwestern Mississippi and central Louisiana through an acquisition of The Markets locations at the end of 2022. It also acquired Beachler’s Hometown Market in Prague, Oklahoma, in March 2023, and Janise’s Supermarket in Sunset, Louisiana, in July 2023.

Harps operates 147 stores in six states. It is the largest employee-owned company in Arkansas, with more than 7,200 associates.

J. Max Van Hoose, president of Harps, said the acquisitions were an important step in the company’s growth.

“Onboarding that group, new states, the strain on your team for having stores that far away in terms of getting everything up and going impacts everyone,” he said. “Kudos to our group for their efforts in that.”

As Harps had acquired some stores prior to the most recent acquisitions, it had some experience of what to do to bring the new employees on board.

“If you look at our leadership group, there’s people in that group that have been part of an acquisition … so we have that story,” Van Hoose said. “Not to say that it’s always super smooth.”

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David Ganoung, SVP and chief marketing officer for Harps, is very familiar with Harps’ growth through acquisition. He was part of one in 1995.

He had been working for Bentonville, Arkansas-based Philips Food for Less when it was bought by Walmart at the time the retail giant was first getting into the grocery business.

When Walmart achieved enough grocery volume that it was transitioning to supercenters, it sold the standalone Food for Less to Harps in 1995.

“I’ve been here ever since. The crazy part is my original hire date. I started in ‘83 as a carry out with the Philips company.

I’ve never left, but I’ve been bought and sold – like a side of beef,” Ganoung said with a laugh.

He added that Harps has a “family feel” for its associates. However, maintaining that has been a challenge as the company has continued to grow.

Van Hoose said it is a change in culture for the new employees and may be a change in operations. Customers also are affected.

“It might take a little while for everybody to get on board. I would say that what has made it work is that historically, we have some experience with it, we have people that have gone through it. The other thing is that we are intentional. We come in and do some training meetings, do questions and answers,” he said, adding that the Harps HR team offers regular leadership training.

“As part of that, you have people coming in and just introduce themselves and what [they] do, here’s the resources we have, please call me, we’re open book, we’re open door.

Unfortunately, there’s not just a super recipe, and we have certainly tripped over ourselves occasionally. We just try to work on that.”

Presenting a new challenge is the fact many of the recent acquisitions are eight-plus hours from the corporate office in Springdale. For those employees to feel they are a part of the Harps family “takes a lot of effort from a lot of people,” according to Eskew.

During the acquisition process, he said Harps had nearly 100 team members traveling to those stores, working with the employees, “training, educating and hopefully building

relationships so that they felt connected to what seems like to them this huge company that they were now a part of.”

These team members often spend months away from their families.

“Everybody knows, this is what we have to do in order to grow the value of our company, and everybody wins … It’s a great team, great people,” Eskew said. “And really, I think a lot of our camaraderie grows when we just take this team of people some 500 miles away, and we’re working hard to bring this new group of people in our company.”

Eskew said the only way to make them feel a part of the Harps family was to spend time with them. He and his wife, Karen, took a week every month for six months and spent time in those stores. Meetings were held with the management team, and Eskew spoke at each one.

“We just went into every store and would spend time talking to employees, one by one,” he said.

The goal was to get to know them and have them get to know him and other Harps team members. Eskew said they wanted their new employees to feel that joining Harps will be the best thing that’s ever happened to them.

“Building trust is really important. That’s the only way we know how to do it, is you’ve got to really know us.”

Eskew said sharing his story is a way to build that trust.

“I started with Harps in 1977 at the lowest level, so I’ve been where they are. I always tell folks, you see me now and you think, well, I’m the CEO of this big company. And I said, but think of the poorest person you know today, from a small town in Northeast Arkansas. That was me. I was nobody.

Nobody knew me. And I was just a student at the University of Arkansas, working a part-time job in a store in Springdale, Arkansas, because they had an ad in the newspaper that they were looking for somebody. And now I’m the chairman and CEO of that company.

“And believe me, if I can do that, then the next chairman or a future chairman or CEO could be one of the people in this room. Because we’re that kind of a company. And I remember when I became CEO, and I was going around the stores for the first time after that, I would have people say, ‘We are so thrilled Please see page 16

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that you’re the CEO because you’re one of us.’ I take that as a great compliment.”

Eskew said he wants people to feel like they can relate to him and that they matter.

“The only way to do that is one person at a time. I think what we have accomplished, a lot of it in 2023, is building relationships with those new acquisitions, by doing it feet on the ground, in those stores, talking to employee after employee.”

Eskew credited his wife with helping to build those relationships. He said she “seems to have 100 percent recall of everything everybody tells her. So the next time she sees them she can say, ‘Your son was having a baby. Are they doing OK?’ And they’re blown away that she remembered that.”

He said the most fun part of his job is being in the stores and talking to the employees.

Goals for 2024 Looking at company goals for 2024, Eskew said the intent always is to grow.

In the post-pandemic years, many people are resuming more of a pre-COVID lifestyle, including dining out more.

“You’re seeing food away from home growing faster than

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food at home now. If you look at AC Neilsen numbers across the whole retail universe, units are down,” he said. “Some of that is because people are transitioning back to eating out a little bit more, and we’re feeling that. Even the SNAP benefit reduction has impacted sales.”

Entering the new year, Van Hoose said Harps will deal with headwinds that come with “the softening of all the stuff that’s happened the last three years, from inflation to COVID to the money that the Fed poured into the economy. With all those things changing, you’re seeing a softening of sales.”

Eskew said he believes 2024 will be the most challenging year in a long time as far as growing same store sales. Even with inflation, people are continuing to return to restaurants.

“Eating out seems really expensive, but I look at our prices and they’ve gone up so much in the last three years, but we still have to try to grow. We’re always talking to somebody about an acquisition or looking for a new site.”

Jim Antz, CFO, said Harps managed “incredible growth” in FY2023, adding that the company continues to find opportunities to expand. This requires going into other areas of Arkansas and other states to find those opportunities because “it’s pretty saturated” in Northern Arkansas, he noted.

“There’s a lot of places in Southern Arkansas, all of

Louisiana, a lot of small independents that don’t have that second or third generation that wants to take over,” Antz said.

“There’s a lot of opportunities for us to grow that way. But just finding that growth is probably our biggest challenge.”

Harps also is addressing the fact that many leadership team members are in their 50s and 60s. Eskew said there will be “a significant transition in leadership” in the company, and they have to be ready for it.

“We have to prepare people now for when that happens. In a very deliberate way, we’re doing leadership training and trying to develop people, more or less the next generation leaders for our company, so that when the time comes we’ve got people ready to step up and meet the challenge,” he said.

“And we hope that we’ll continue with the culture that we’ve tried to develop, that we think makes this a great place to work. And that’s a big deal.”

Harps’ formula for growth is working and the evidence is in the numbers. Eskew said company stock went up 22 percent in 2022. He estimated an increase for 2023 of about 15 percent.

“If you’ve got a million dollars in stock, that’s $150,000 in value that went up last year because of our stock increase. The value of our employees’ stock went up $48 million. That’s value that we added.”

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Grocer proud of Employee Stock Ownership Plan Harps Foods Stores is employee owned through its Employee Stock Ownership Plan and, as a result, many associates have built substantial wealth over the years.

The ESOP began in 2001. Chairman and CEO Kim Eskew said Harps stock was $27.90 a share the first year of the ESOP. In 2022, it was $1,410 per share.

As Harps continues to grow through acquisitions, Eskew said talking to the employees of the companies Harps has purchased about the ESOP is important.

Eskew shared how a team of employees, many of whom came aboard during previous acquisitions and now have between $1 million to $2 million in Harps stock, will go and speak to the associates joining the Harps team. They are an

example of the benefit of being a Harps employee through the ESOP. Eskew said he tells the employees who will join Harps about the team members they are meeting.

“They’re just ordinary people who worked hard, who believed in each other, who have a great team. And because of that, they’ve accumulated maybe a million or two million, and they never believed in their wildest dreams they would have that,” he said.

“That person is right here. It’s not somebody you don’t know – it’s this person. And that can happen for you, too. If we believe in each other, and we pull together, you trust us enough to do what we ask you to do, that can happen over and over again because we see it every single year.”

Eskew said, for example, a cashier who started with Harps in 2001, when it became an ESOP, and who has remained in that position throughout may have 20 to 30 times their annual pay in the value of their Harps stock.

“If you are making $25,000 a year and if you’ve been working for Harps since 2001, in our ESOP you might have $750,000 …

Most of our folks can’t believe that. You almost have to pinch yourself, because they never thought they would have that,” he said.

Eskew attempts to contact everyone who has worked for Harps for 20 years or more when they decide to retire, either through a personal visit or a phone call.

“I thank them, wish them well, but also check with Jim Antz, our CFO, and find out how much stock they have,” he said. “Because one of the most fulfilling Please see page 20

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Jim Antz

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things I get as a CEO is when I’m talking to somebody who has spent their entire life working for us. I know they’re getting ready to retire, and they’ve got a million dollars to retire with.

“And it happened because of what, collectively, we’ve all been able to do together and accomplish together. And everybody who hangs in there benefits from it. To me, that is the most fulfilling thing about my job is seeing so many people hit retirement age and be able to retire comfortably, because of what we’ve done together.”

Antz said the ESOP has been “tremendous” for Harps employees. He noted that during a recent managers’ meeting, it was shared that a warehouse picker had recently retired with about 35 times his original salary in his ESOP account.

“And that doesn’t include what happens this year on our stock price, which we expect it to go up. It’s just phenomenal,” Antz said. “It’s like he’s retiring, finally, at the end of being with us 20-something years. And I’m not even sure if he realized how much money had built up. It’s just been a game changer for the longer-term employees. It really permeates everybody’s thinking … It’s life changing.”

Eskew added that he is proud of how well the ESOP has done and the company’s success and ability to grow.

“Because growth, in and of itself is not enough, just increasing sales. My job is to build value for the owners … I look at my job as building the value of the stock that you own and increasing it year after year. And really, my job is to make [our employees] money.”

Eskew expects a lot of hard work from his leadership and management teams. He pushes all employees to do their very best, and he works to ensure the reward at the end is worth it.

“We are going to ask a lot. It is going to be hard. We’re not going to apologize for that, because that’s what it takes to maximize what we can be,” he explained. “I believe we’ve been able to do that because we’ve been true to our word.

Our people believe in it. And they’re willing to step up to meet those demands and, therefore, perpetuate our success going forward.”

President J. Max Van Hoose said Harps’ competitors have a lot of resources, so one of the company’s biggest challenges is deciding how to allocate capital – new store or remodel, acquisition or systems. It also must stay on top of regulations, such as refrigerant requirements.

“There are expectations. You want to keep good people and compete in the marketplace. That’s a challenge,” he said.”

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Staffing is a challenge. Another big challenge is just trying to make sure that you are spending your stockholders’ equity and investment wisely.”

He went on to note it is important for Harps to maintain its integrity going forward and “try to do the right thing.”

“Our objective is not only to serve our communities but also to serve our owners and make this a worthwhile investment on their part,” he said.

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Partnerships with ECRS, Birdzi, Upshop taking technology to ‘next level’ As Harps Food Stores continues on its growth trajectory, it is addressing upgrades to technology.

The company is in the process of rolling out a new front-end POS system. It also is upgrading its mobile app and will transition to computer-assisted ordering in 2024.

Harps is working with North Carolina-based ECRS on the new POS system. Chairman and CEO Kim Eskew said they hope to have that project finished in 2024.

“That’s a real challenge,” he said. “The plus and minus to having so many locations is that when you swap out POS systems, it’s a lot.”

The Harps IT team has been working hard on the project, often overnight to minimize disruption during business hours. Mike Thurow, SVP, store systems, is spearheading the ECRS rollout, Eskew said.

Harps is working with Birdzi on upgrades to its mobile app and loyalty program, with a focus on more individualized marketing. David Ganoung, SVP and chief marketing officer, is leading that project. Eskew said the company will be able to make offers to customers based on their shopping habits.

“Hopefully, they’re presented with [products] that are really important to them, that are really relevant and that matter. It can be tailored to each person individually,” he said.

“It’s a challenge for us to do that.”

According to Ganoung, it is important to grab shoppers’ attention when they are online.

“In the digital world, if you don't get the customer’s attention within the first 15 seconds, you've lost them,” he explained. “As they're opening up that app, how can you drive that content that is relevant to them?

Kim Eskew

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Mike Thurow

David Ganoung

J. Max Van Hoose

“Through another AI solution, our app will learn what the consumer shops and buys. When you go to open up the ad, it's going to sort the ad items on categories that are relevant to you, versus the digital coupons. There's over 200 digital coupons. How do you have time to go through all those?”

Ganoung said work on the project began in August and Harps is “taking it to the next level.”

“We’re going to do six different promotions that, as a retailer, I can establish the parameters of what it's going to do in the discount and how much I want to spend.”

The goal is to get enough pertinent content to the customer to drive engagement.

“For us, as an independent, the more engagement I can have through the app, can I now attract CPGs to come in and do more funded programs with us? The technology is out there,” Ganoung said. “You see the basket size and how it grows when you get the customer that’s using the app. We’re going all in on the mobile app this year.”

Thurow said the upgrade will allow customers to clip coupons in the app and have the discount provided at the time of the order. The ECRS system will allow that process, whereas their older system would not.

Another effort to encourage customer engagement on its mobile app is installing Wi-Fi in all Harps stores.

As many stores in rural locations have sporadic or very poor cell service, Wi-Fi not only will benefit customers but also employees. Thurow said the company will be renewing contracts with its network provider.

“This year, not only are we increasing our bandwidth everywhere, because our needs are greater, we're adding that Wi-Fi piece in there,” he said. “We have so many stores in so many areas that are way out in the sticks. And if you don't have good cell phone reception, the customer can't pull anything up or look at anything. So having the Wi-Fi in there will allow them to do that.”

Another major technology undertaking is Harps’ partnership with Upshop, a provider of inventory and replenishment optimization solutions, to improve its operational efficiency and enhance customer satisfaction.

“We’re going to test that in 2024. We believe it’s necessary, and we believe it’ll be useful but it’s also a challenge,” Eskew said.

Harps will be using Upshop’s Magic product to address challenges such as monitoring and managing store conditions, generating orders and ensuring product availability.

It will enable Harps to optimize inventory and ordering for center store and fresh departments, allowing it to streamline its merchandising operations, enhance its IT footprint and consolidate various functions into a single solution spanning the entire store.

Ganoung said the technology will allow managers to spend more time on the customer experience and training associates rather than generating orders, which will provide “huge opportunities for us to grow and gain as a retailer.”

He said they are doing the integration work on computerized ordering, with the goal of piloting the program in some stores in January, with a company-wide rollout in April or May. Thurow said his department is on the front end of the company’s partnership with Upshop.

“We’re just now figuring out what’s going to be required in terms of hardware here in the general office and the store, and then what sort of data feeds we’re going to need to provide for that to make it work,” he said.

“It has tremendous potential. Anything that can help you manage your inventory, stock levels better, to where you don't have a lot of extra stuff on hand, but you also have enough things on hand that you're not out of stock or missing sales. That has huge potential,” Thurow said.

President J. Max Van Hoose said they also have to continue to remove friction at the front end. “We’re kind of competing with your phone, and how easy it is to do certain things.”

He went on to note they have to continue moving customers through checkout “very quickly,” whether it’s a staffed lane or self-checkout, which the company has just recently begun debuting in some of its stores. He said they are trying to find the balance between customers who want a personal touch and those who prefer the convenience of self-checkout.

In addition to system upgrades, cybersecurity is an area of great importance for Harps.

Thurow said Harps is dealing with the same issues as others in the industry, battling credit card and DIR fees. It also is changing to a new type of encryption, offered through its credit card processor, Fiserve.

He said the company is spending more time and money each year on IT security and improving internal safeguards, along with awareness training so employees are not fooled by phishing emails or clicking on attachments that could contain malware.

Thurow belongs to a CIO share group through NGA, which he said meets a couple of times each year to discuss issues.

“Several people have had brushes with ransomware where malware has gotten loose in their enterprise and [they] had to deal with that … That's something that we want to try to avoid or be prepared for at all costs,” he said. “Ten years ago, you didn't have to spend the time and the effort on that like you do now. It's a real threat now.

“It just seems like the bigger we get, the bigger target we are or the bigger opportunity we are for some bad actor to try to get in and get some ransomware going in our enterprise. That's a big concern.”

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Harps’ employees work hard – like they own the place, which most of them do The company culture at Harps Food Stores is “kind of a hybrid between this great, huge family and a team of some sort. A lot of really great people, many that have been here a long time,” according to Frank Ray, SVP of human resources and chief human resources officer.

Ray would know about longevity – he has been with Harps since 1984, when Frank Ray he started in the store manager trainee program. He said while there is some turnover, for the most part Harps associates “treat each other like family. It’s just a wonderful place to work.”

President J. Max Van Hoose said Harps’ associates are friendly and “we all get along.” Being employee owned is a big part of the company culture, but he recognizes that is not of equal importance to all 7,000-plus employees.

“But to move the needle for the leadership group is super important. And so, because of that, generally, we have a fairly common objective. Retail’s in the detail. And the detail being in the P&L.” Van Hoose said they want everyone in the leadership group – from department managers to store managers – to understand the numbers.

“When you come on board, you’re going to start to understand gross margin, all of the expenses … You’re going to see the actual numbers for your department and there’s some accountability there. So while we’re friendly, there’s grit and there’s determination. We’re resolute. We know that this is a hard business, and everybody’s expecting a lot. We also know that part of the culture is, hey, this is what we do. You should be accountable, and you should understand it, and there’s

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nothing to hide here. So maybe the word is transparent.”

He said CEO Kim Eskew takes his responsibility to heart.

“There’s this fiduciary responsibility to our owners, and our owners happen to be our employees. So there’s this nice circular accountability. But we have to also be aware that the ESOP doesn’t have the same motivation for the whole team. The longer you’re here, literally the more ownership you will have.

But there’s certainly a momentum to it when a significant part of your team has a vested interest,” Van Hoose said.

Ray agreed that being employee owned has a lot to do with the company culture. He noted in the early days of the ESOP, it was tough.

“We really had to do a lot of communication about employee ownership and what that meant to people. And eventually, once they started seeing that really did mean they were going to share in the profits of this company, then I think people got it,” he said.

“And they started working like they owned the place, which most of them do. At least half of them have stock now. It started out kind of slow, but it’s been like this ever since. And I don’t know what percentage to attribute to us being employee owned. I just know it has had a tremendous impact on our success.”

Ray said Harps also offers a lot of training and education to its future leaders. Anyone can participate in the training, he added.

“And then just the growth opportunities and training and education that we offer non-management people and, in some cases, people that aren’t ever going to want to be managers. I think those are really big things,” he said.

Ray also noted the challenges that came with the company acquiring three different groups of stores and expanding into

two new states over the past three years.

He lauded the work they have done with store leadership in the Louisiana and Mississippi acquisitions, teaching them about Harps’ culture.

“That’s a pretty big task. Are we 100 percent there yet? No, but we’re getting there. There are a lot of great people in those stores as well, that have hung in there and given us a chance.

I think they see that it’ll be a good thing for them eventually,” Ray said.

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Harps’ biggest challenge moving forward centers around employees, Eskew said.

“I believe if you have great people and they’re trained, that you have unity in your company. At our year-end meeting, I said I believe we have a good reputation in the industry. And sometimes, I told them, I think I get too much credit for this. I believe that people do look at us as being a well-run operation, a good company. That’s what people tell me when I meet them, that your company is different. And it’s a challenge to keep that going. We’re really trying hard to do that.”

Developing and training employees is a “huge challenge,” Eskew said, adding that many times the most valuable assets they have acquired in an acquisition are the people.

“Many of our leaders in our company today came aboard during the acquisition. And so, mining those stores and getting to know who has potential in this new group of folks, and then bringing them onto our team and getting them trained and bringing them along has been a great resource for us. You don’t know who you’re getting at the time. We’ve just gotten a lot of wonderful, wonderful people through acquisitions, and it’s made us better as a company.”

David Ganoung, SVP and chief marketing officer for Harps, said Eskew’s driving force centers around company culture, “what we stand for and how we treat our associates. I think if you went out and you were to talk to the associates in the stores, that resonates all the way through the whole channel.

It’s a good place to work.”

Giving back to associates, communities Adding to the company culture of “family” among associates is the Harps Crisis Fund, which was started about 35 years ago, prior to the ESOP. The fund was designed to help Please see page 26

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employees in times of need, such as losing their home due to fire or a tornado, Ray said.

“It is 100 percent funded by employees having money voluntarily held out of their paycheck,” he said.

At a recent year-end meeting with store managers, Ray shared that in FY2023 the company helped 304 associates by distributing $198,000 through the crisis fund.

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“And we still have lots of money in the fund to help people,” he said.

“That’s what I tell people when I’m talking to [them] about coming to work for us, or maybe new people that have come to work for us. You’re joining a team of people. Some of them you will never meet, but they care enough about other people that they put money in this fund to help them out.”

Ray said when he started working in HR in 1998, he immediately became part of the committee that fields requests for

assistance.

“Back then, we might get one request a month. We get one a day now,” he said. “There are big things – fire, flood, a death in the family that they need to travel across the country to attend the funeral. But it’s kind of morphed into more than that, a lot of little things that come up with people’s lives that we help with.”

Harps also believes in giving back to its communities.

CFO Jim Antz said the company’s 29th annual charity golf

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tournament raised about $150,000 in 2023. Over time, the tournament has brought in about $4 million to donate to local charities.

He also noted Harps’ “Christmas for Communities” program, where store employees can recommend a charity special to them to receive a donation from the tournament proceeds.

“Our charity golf committee goes through all those, and we try to grant a lot of those right in time for Christmas. That’s where we spend most of the money that we raise from the charity golf [tournament],” he said.

Harps has been recognized by both Newsweek and Forbes for fostering a positive work environment and valuing its employees. In 2023, Forbes named Harps to its lists of America’s Best Employers By State, Best Employers For Women (No. 368) and America’s Best Midsize Employers (No. 220). Newsweek ranked Harps the 10th best supermarket retailer in the nation in 2023.

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‘Impactful theme’ greets shoppers at flagship store in Lowell, Arkansas

Harps Food Stores has been named The Shelby Report of the Southwest’s 2023 Retailer of the Year. Shelby SVP Jan Meade recently toured store No. 228 in Lowell, Arkansas, with Harps District Manager Brian Zamzow and Store Manager Madison Bates.

Bates said the Lowell location is one of the company’s flagships stores.

Entering the store, Zamzow said they try to have an “impactful theme” in place to greet customers as they proceed into the floral and produce department. He noted it boasts about 1,000 produce items, which is one of Harp’s largest selections. The cut fruit, which is prepared in-house, is a popular item.

Next on the tour is the wine department.

“For a grocery store our size, it’s probably an expanded variety of wine compared to some [of our] smaller stores, where we might only have 24 feet of wine. This is probably five times that,” Zamzow said.

The full-service meat department at the back of the store includes seafood and specialty meats. A 20-foot lobster tank is located in the middle it.

“We carry USDA Choice beef, we have a premium pork program and smart chicken program,” Zamzow said.

He noted a “pick five” program in the meat department, which has “a little bit of everything” available. The store also features a “pick five” program in frozen.

Harps’ private label brands are Best Choice and Always Save from Associated Wholesale Grocers, the company’s wholesaler.

The bakery features several local products, including Stone Mill Bread from nearby Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Zamzow said they try to carry local products whenever possible.

“They have a cranberry pecan bread that’s awesome. It’s a best seller and won’t last long,” he said.

The full-service deli carries Boars Head meats.

“We have top line meats and cheeses here, a lot of imported and specialty cheeses, especially during the holidays.”

Zamzow said the deli looked “a lot different” pre-COVID. When so many nearby offices closed due to the pandemic, he said they had to downsize the cold and hot food cases.

The pharmacy department features a drive-thru and “the best pharmacist around,” Zamzow said.

He added that Harps is beginning to install self-checkouts in its stores but will keep a “healthy balance.”

Self-checkouts will be available for those who want to use them, but full-service checkouts will remain. Zamzow said they have been well received thus far.

Other new technology Harps will be implementing is via a partnership with Upshop. Zamzow said it is in the early stages but believes it will be “a real win for us.” It will allow a better way to place orders and replace a more antiquated system.

When asked for his reaction to Harps being named Retailer of the Year, Zamzow said the company, “from top to bottom,” is very humble.

“When people come in and tell us how good we are, it almost makes you feel uncomfortable.”

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For more store photos, see page 30

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