Brookstone

Type	Privately held company
Industry	Retail
Founded	Peterborough, New Hampshire 1965[1]
Headquarters	Merrimack, New Hampshire
Number of locations	300 (April 2011)[2]
Key people	Jackson Tai, Chairman Stephen Bebis, President and     Chief Executive Officer James M. Speltz, Vice President,    Chief Operating Officer Thomas F. Moynihan, Vice President,     Chief Financial Officer Bill Wood, Vice President,     Chief Information Officer Robert M. Chessen, Vice President,     Human Resources Don Eames, Vice President,     General Manager Retail Stephen A. Gould, Vice President,     General Counsel Steven H. Schwartz, Vice President,     Merchandising Deirdre C. Zimmermann, Vice President,     Marketing
Owner(s)	Osim International J.W. Childs Associates, L.P. Temasek Holdings
Website	http://www.brookstone.com/

An outlet store in Kittery, Maine

Brookstone is a chain of retail stores in the United States. Its first store was opened in 1973 in Peterborough, New Hampshire.^[3] Its headquarters are currently located in Merrimack, New Hampshire.^[3][4]

Brookstone sells products ranging from remote control helicopters and alarm clocks, to massage chairs. The company has its own brand and makes electronic gadgets — one of the store's main focuses.^[3][5]

The company is also known for having every item in the store on display for customers to have a real hands-on shopping experience, being able to try out every product before making a decision on the purchase.^[3]

History[link]

Pierre de Beaumont and his wife Marry began Brookstone in 1965, for $500. ^[6] After learning accounting by correspondence, they began mailing catalogs to thousands of hobbyists.^[6] It was based in their Berkshires farmhouse, and they named the company after their farm.

Pierre de Beaumont was known as a tinkerer,^[6] and Brookstone's start and initial product base was driven around the purpose of making hard-to-find and useful items/tools.^[6][4][7] Brookstone started out as a catalog company,^[3] with local and long-distance catalog circulations that initially were introduced from a classified ad in a Popular Mechanics magazine in 1965.^[7][3] The demand for the unique products that Brookstone offered developed into a strong consumer, demand-based system that led to a need for specific Brookstone retail stores.^[4]

Brookstone opened its first store in 1972 in New Hampshire. Due to the growing success of this store, many more followed during the next decade. One small issue developed from their store outlets — this issue was that the customer-base for Brookstone stores were almost exclusively limited to those who receive their distributed catalogs. Brookstone fixed this issue in the 1980s by introducing products in their store not available in their catalogs that still had a focus on their original idea of offering unique tools and household goods. The new items introduced in their retail stores brought in items geared towards travel, leisure, technology, audio, and games, and even developed a hands-on experience for almost all of their products.^[4][7][3] Due to the introduction of these new products, more customers developed an interest and sales gradually increased through the 1980s.^[4]

In 1987, sales were posted at $93 million, which Brookstone considered a record.^[4] Their income, though, was at -$9.7 million,^[4] and this situation continued through the late 1980s. Even though sales were increasing, Brookstone decided to focus on ideas of creating products towards women, and converting their stores' overall look driven towards a "men's clubhouse" feeling. Store arrangements were also changed to provide a less crowded, and more comfortable atmosphere. These efforts proved to be successful as an annual positive income was made at $4.9 million, with sales at $104.6 million in the early '90s.^[4]

Even with this success, Brookstone wanted more improvements, and decided to cut back its computer programming staff that worked on their retail computer system. With needs in the retail scene changing, their initial, already developed retail software systems became useful, which ended up making Brookstone's remaining staffed programmers unnecessary, which developed into strong annual savings for Brookstone.^[4]

In 1992, Brookstone ventured upon new types of sales avenues with the use of kiosks that featured the ability to purchase Brookstone items right at the kiosk, but contained a limited selection of items.^[4] The kiosks were separated from the Brookstone stores, but were contained in the same mall. These kiosks also proved to be a successful business venture with an overall sales jump to $143.7 million.^[4]

By 1993, Brookstone operated around 100 stores in the US. Sales in these stores accounted for 85 percent of their annual revenue, with their still existing magazine, and kiosk sales contributing to the remaining 15 percent.^[4]

At this time, Brookstone only had two distribution centers, and decided to add a brand-new one in 1994 in Missouri, which resulted in faster shipments of their products to customers at no cost - as they ventured into the late 1990s with a count of around 150 stores in 32 states, more than 100 kiosks, and with the introduction of their online retail store.^[4][7] Brookstone evolved into a multi-million dollar company while retaining a strong grip on their original theme of offering unique and interesting products. Future growth for Brookstone remains strong with a current retail store count of over 300 retail stores and 100 seasonal stores^[8] in the US and Puerto Rico.^[4][7][3]

Competition[link]

Brookstone was in competition with The Sharper Image, which has since declared bankruptcy. Brookstone's major competitor, Hammacher Schlemmer, retails mostly online and through catalogs. It has one retail store in New York City.

Philanthropy[link]

Since 2008, Brookstone has partnered with charity and nonprofit organizations, Charity for Women, Breast Cancer Network of Strength, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure, to promote breast cancer awareness. In each case, a portion of the sales of special pink Brookstone products were donated to the partnering organization. The company has also recently partnered with Save the Children, pledging a small donation for every valid e-mail address customers provide in stores.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Temasek Holdings