THIS STORE IS  YOUR “Our store Associates live and work in each store’s community and interact with over 100 million Customers each week. If we utilize infor mation from all available r esources including Customers, Associates and suppliers, our store will reflect the interests of its community . We will sell merchandise the Customers want to buy, not merchandise we want to sell. By accomplishing this goal, we create happy, satisfied  Customers because  they can now complete all of their shopping in one location, our store,” Coughlin added. The detailed knowledge of a community created by the Customer/Associate partnership allows each store to differentiate department size, shelf-space allocation and departmental adjacencies. The result is a more efficient distribution of inventory by stocking our stores based on customer preferences rather than standardized assortments. It also increases sales, reduces markdowns and lowers inventory investment in the system. Most of all, it keeps Customers coming back into our stores because we’re attentive to their needs. Wal-Mart has taken individualized assortment  to a new level with its Store of the Community initiative. The Store  of the Community is not a new line  of stores, but rather an exciting model for existing Wal-Mart discount stores and Supercenters to meet the shopping needs of local store Customers. Introduced in fiscal 2001, these stores are specifically tailored to mirror the demographic makeup of their respective communities.  “The one-size-fits-all concept simply doesn’t work anymore in the retail industry. Customers tell us what they want and it is our responsibility to meet those needs,” Tom Coughlin, President & CEO of the Wal-Mart Stores Division, said. The Store of the Community is stocked based on a combination of consumer purchasing data, area demographics, customer preferences and input from our store Associates. Evaluating the buying patterns of Customers enables Wal-Mart buyers to determine what is selling best at each store and purchase merchandise based on each  store’s data.  All store managers, including general managers and department managers, submit yearly surveys, which include information such  as when little league baseball or  a hunting season begins in their community. This specific data is invaluable for developing a Store  of the Community. For example,  a Wal-Mart store located near  a hospital may need a larger pharmacy area. Stores close to recreational bodies of water stock life vests and fishing equipment not carried in most land-locked stores. Other stores offer regional sporting goods. Softball leagues in Louisiana would not know what to do with a softball that is four inches larger in diameter like those used in Chicago and other urban areas.  In addition to obvious assortment flexibility, the program also allows seasonal start and end dates to be determined by the needs of the Customers and not by a store’s particular geographic zone. For example, turkey-hunting season  may extend longer in one state than in an adjacent state. The Store of  the Community concept allows us to tailor the first store’s assor tment so that it can display turkey hunting mer chandise until the end of its season.