Selling Retailers on Opening Shop at DFW: Airport Executives Push to Broaden Concessions Options

May 30--LAS VEGAS -- Michael Baldwin wants a FedEx Kinko's store inside Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.

Baldwin, an executive in the airport's revenue-management department, has spent a year and a half cajoling the Dallas-based chain to put one of its printing-and-shipping stores inside an airport terminal for the first time.

Last week, he traveled 1,100 miles to pay the company another visit, at a sprawling booth in Las Vegas. Baldwin was one of six executives from D/FW Airport attending the annual convention of the International Council of Shopping Centers, the world's largest trade show for retailers.

The airport, which is trying to fill its five terminals with restaurants and shops, sent its largest delegation to this year's show. Some of the targets:

A workout facility, such as 24 Hour Fitness or Lifetime Fitness.

A women's clothing store whose name was kept under wraps.

A printing-and-shipping store, such as FedEx Kinko's or The UPS Store.

"This is D/FW's coming-out party," Ken Buchanan, the airport's executive vice president of revenue management, said shortly after arriving May 21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. "This thing is huge."

And the sheer number of potential tenants isn't necessarily the airport's biggest challenge.

"A lot of these guys don't view the airport as a viable place to do business," Buchanan said.

D/FW has been pressing to add more retail -- it gets about half of its annual $500 million budget from airlines. In Las Vegas, it was touting the impending openings of several new stores and restaurants, ranging from Dunkin' Donuts to Mont Blanc, and the availability of credit-card processing at 97 Pepsi machines.

At the same time, D/FW was recently called out by respondents in a J.D. Power survey on the depth -- or lack thereof -- of its food, beverage and retail offerings, even though it placed first among North American airports in overall satisfaction. Other airports also rated low in the retail categories.

So, for four days in Sin City, D/FW executives slipped into their most comfortable shoes and roamed three giant convention halls, covering more than 2 million square feet.

"It's so overwhelming," Zenola Campbell, the airport's vice president of concessions, said on her third day walking among the exhibitors. "Last night I slept like a baby."

Kinko's skeptical

As he approached the FedEx Kinko's booth, Baldwin noted the importance of this meeting.

"We've been nurturing this one for a while," he said. "We think we're close."

Accompanying Baldwin were Campbell and Ken Mosig, an assistant vice president of revenue management.

They gathered around a small table in the back of the FedEx Kinko's booth with Jayson Haynes, the company's manager of nontraditional development and a former American Airlines executive.

Haynes said he hadn't done a market analysis to find out whether a store would work in the airport.

Besides shopping centers, FedEx Kinko's has stores in hotels and convention centers.

"I'm hopeful there's a way to figure it out," he said.

FedEx Kinko's is a tough sell. More than a year ago, the company turned down D/FW's original idea to put a copy-and-print store on the north mezzanine level in Terminal D next to Reata restaurant, Buchanan said after the Las Vegas meeting in an interview with the Star-Telegram.

At this new meeting, Baldwin floated the idea of a FedEx Kinko's "hub-and-satellite" system of stores at the airport.

Kinko's could have one main storefront, he said, and a couple of other smaller outlets.

Haynes was skeptical. Travelers might not want to print documents and lug them onto a plane, he said. But he could see customers stopping into a FedEx Kinko's store at the airport and arranging to have documents printed at or delivered to a destination.

That's when Haynes passed out glossy fliers to the airport executives promoting the company's new online printing service. The new service did all that he described, just not in an airport.