Our Heritage...

Fred Meyer was a man of vision. As a boy in Brooklyn, he looked west, to Portland, Oregon, and saw opportunity. After a stint selling tea and coffee door-to-door, he looked to the grocery business. There, Meyer saw untapped potential. In 1917, he opened his first store, initiating self-service and daring to replace traditional credit-and-delivery with convenient cash-and-carry.

Meyer then looked at his customers, shuttling store-to-store in search of the freshest produce, the best meats, and the most fashionable clothing. What he saw was the future. In 1922 Meyer opened his first "marketplace" store-a bakery, butcher shop, grocery store, dry-goods store, and other specialty shops, all under one roof. The retail business would never look the same.

Fred Meyer Stores merges a tradition of customer focus with entrepreneurial merchandising to create one of the largest multi-department retail chains in the United States.

Ask Pacific Northwest consumers what the name "Fred Meyer" means to them and they'll tell you: Fred Meyer means service, selection, quality, and value-all in a setting that makes shopping fun.

With 118 stores in six Northwest and Intermountain states, Fred Meyer has earned a reputation as a "local" busi-ness, serving customers where they prefer to shop. Unlike typical super-centers, Fred Meyer stores are conveniently sited close to neighborhoods. Merchandise is based on a careful assessment of local demand. Sales are monitored closely, and selections are adjusted to ensure that each store's product mix matches customers' needs and preferences.

A Leader in Food

At the heart of each Fred Meyer store is an industry-leading supermarket, combining great food and everyday low prices. Following this strategy, Fred Meyer Stores has earned a leading market share in its headquarters city, Portland, Oregon, and many other markets.

Food accounts for approximately 60 percent of Fred Meyer Stores sales. By the company's innovative definition, "food" includes everything from fresh produce, staple groceries, pharmaceuticals, and beauty aids to upscale service departments such as meat, seafood, deli, and bakery. Nutrition centers, staffed by specially trained managers, make Fred Meyer Stores the third largest U.S. retailer in the business of natural foods and nutritional supplements.

The company augments its extensive grocery selections with perimeter shops and products catering to customer tastes. Many stores now feature New York-style bagels, Japanese-style sushi bars, candy shops, fresh juice bars, and steam tables with fast, hot foods.

Beyond the Grocer's Shelf

Fred Meyer Stores' strong food offerings attract cus-tomers to the company's diverse general merchandise businesses. Selections include family apparel, house-wares, bath and bedding, decor, furniture, home improvement, gardening, music, electronics, toys and sporting goods. In most categories, Fred Meyer fea-tures upscale, department-store brands and specialty store products, offered in specialty-look depart-ments. Prices are competitive every day, with strong weekly promotions to attract customers.

The scope, breadth, and range of this selection reflects founder Fred Meyer's unique ability to choose a category and cultivate it."Fred Meyer was a pioneer at identifying the right businesses to enter, at running them as unique entities, and at generating growth that contributes to the success of the whole company," says Mary Sammons, pres-ident and CEO. "He did it by believing that, no matter which business he chose, he had to satisfy individual customers."

Keeping Up With Customers

Building on its successful store-within-a-store con-cept, Fred Meyer Stores added new specialty shops in 1997. Sixty-two in-store Splash Shop boutiques carry soaps, bath gels, and related products. Forty- five locations sell "bridge" jewelry-better than costume but more affordable than fine jewelry. The company also doubled the number of stores with one-hour photo shops, and equipped 45 music departments with new listening stations that let customers sample compact discs. Tapping two current strong trends, the company added fully stocked pet centers and intensified its nutrition centers in 1997. And with customers focusing more on their homes, Fred Meyer Stores will add bedding specialty shops to 25 locations in 1998.

Strong Private Brands

In both food and nonfood, Fred Meyer Stores offers products in the good-better-best range, with emphasis on better. This approach applies to both brand-name products and the company's growing line of private brands-high-quality alternatives to higher-priced brand names.

Fred Meyer Stores' private-brand program-one of the industry's most diverse and successful-accounts for more than 20 percent of grocery sales and just under 20 percent of nonfood sales. Private-brand sales are expected to grow as the company creates a larger family of private products, many of which will be shared among Fred Meyer companies. "Opportunities abound for us to share market intel-ligence, best practices, customer service techniques, merchandising expertise, and facilities and systems of the highest caliber," Sammons says. "We have much to offer each other."

Mary Sammons, president and CEO of Fred Meyer Stores, came to the company in 1973 as a store management trainee in apparel. Through a variety of executive posts, she has since mastered merchandising and operations in diverse retail categories and championed many changes: intensifying customer focus, improving technology, and sponsoring new distribution facilities. "All Fred Meyer Stores' departments share one goal: to satisfy customers. Our success will be measured by our ability to cultivate unique approaches to that shared goal," Sammons says.