Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
Indianapolis welcomed back Do it Best members, vendors and channel partners for the co-op’s 2024 Fall Market September 6-9.
The focus of the event—and the co-op’s priorities for its next fiscal year—are all related to driving growth for members through data, technology and other solutions, which vice president of sales and business development Greg Fuller highlighted at the market kickoff event Friday afternoon.
“At Do it Best, we’re not just your supplier, we’re your partner, and our focus on your growth, profitability and long-term success sets us apart,” Fuller says. “It’s critical that we create an inviting store environment that resonates with consumers and makes your business the go-to destination for their essential purchases. And Do it Best is here to ensure your business remains resilient and competitive.”
Translated to the Market Floor, growth showed up in several areas, including 120 new vendors, which is a record over the previous one met at the spring market in Houston, and 3,000 new items added since the spring as well.
The Launch Zone was a returning favorite area on the market floor for product discovery. This space features vendors that are new to the warehouse and offer extensive demos of their products. The Vault area of the floor featured limited quantity SKUs that could only be purchased at the market, and several retailers said they found good deals on niche and seasonal products. Overall, retailers said having a mix of established and new vendors is something they have come to expect when they attend Do it Best markets.
“We definitely come here with a plan of what we want to see,” says John Billings, branch manager for S.W. Collins Co. which has five locations in Maine. “But we always end up finding 10 to 15 vendors we didn’t expect. We love coming to Indy, and we like the setup here at this market.”
In the store-on-the-floor area Solutions in Action, Do it Best highlighted the farm and ranch category. Replete with live chicks and a substantial live goods area, the 13,000-square-foot space allowed retailers to see how certain assortments can come together in a retail store.
“This is a critical category for retailers serving rural communities where these products are essential for daily life and work,” says vice president of merchandising Jason Stofleth. “With an unmatched breadth and depth of farm and ranch products, we’re committed to equipping our members with everything they need to meet their customers’ diverse demands.”
A new area of the market floor—Studio 695—is the complement to Solutions in Action for lumber dealers at the market. Having seen the success of the Solutions in Action area, the millwork and interior solutions department wanted to replicate a space unique to their department to show the scope of their capabilities. Studio 695 is a fully furnished apartment featuring all the layers of a new build, from doors and flooring to plumbing fixtures, bedding and decor.
Vice president of lumber and building materials Russ Kathrein says this example of the co-op’s capabilities in LBM is in response to analytics the company has noted for searches on its e-commerce platform.
“Lumber is our top searched item, followed closely by related terms like pressure-treated lumber, drywall, siding and plywood,” Kathrein says. “To address these requests, we’ve added more than 1,000 lumber items to our e-commerce platform over the last six months, and that’s just the beginning.”
Kathrein says the next step is to extend similar solutions for pro-focused customers, as the majority of those searches and online sales for LBM supplies are mainly consumers.
Digital Growth
In the spring, Do it Best introduced several data-focused tools, including its inventory productivity analysis, digital marketing solutions and updates to its e-commerce program. These platforms were still a core component of the fall market, and at the Market Kickoff event, vice president of marketing and e-commerce Allison Flatjord highlighted some of the successes and upcoming initiatives.
She introduced that the company has been working with a “marketing lab” of four retailers who are engaging in new strategies to drive store traffic, including sending targeted emails to customers based on loyalty data and increasing the inventory shown online. So far, the strategies have proved fruitful, with retailer participants seeing four times the conversion rate with loyalty-based emails and an increase in e-commerce sales over 250% month-over-month.
“These tests are driving real results. And we’ll continue to test with these members to use data to help you drive sales at retail,” Flatjord says. “This is our new marketing approach—testing, data, innovation—designed to help you grow sales. And we’ll be communicating our learnings to you as we go.”
Another marketing initiative the company introduced is an extension of its PriceBusters program, which is a group of products offered at a discount. For the first time, Do it Best will promote 10 key PriceBusters items each month with print materials including end cap signs, danglers, a door poster and stickers along with digital ads, social media graphics and prominent placements on doitbest.com.
“Our goal is to complement your in-store efforts with co-op-supported advertising that drives even more traffic to your location,” Fuller says.
Actionable Data
Another tool the company is reporting results from is its Inventory Productivity Analysis, which provides retailers a heat map of departments, planograms or other segments of the salesfloor to evaluate performance. The tool is available for free for members who participate in a Retail Performance project, which could be a ground-up build, a large-scale renovation or an expansion. Vice president of merchandising Jason Stofleth says there has been significant interest in the tool.
“Just since the beginning of August, we’ve launched seven members with the heat map, over 20 additional members have data flowing as we finalize their planogram codes, and we have another 70 members in the queue,” he says.
Customizable planograms are another resource Do it Best featured to help retailers drive sales. Stofleth says they have 2,700 planograms in their library that retailers can access, but all of those are customizable based on a store’s specific needs, whether that be customer demand or locality. Stofleth says a retailer who utilized a custom planogram across 12 feet saw a 36% increase in turns and a 31% lift in sales.
Fuller says these tools and solutions are a way for retailers to take action with the data, instead of just having access to data and not knowing what to do with it.
“These tools are designed for a hardware, home center, multi-store chain, and it’s not just the data you need to consume, it’s very actionable,” he says. “Retailing is an art and a science. We have to have products and programs that make sense and can be scalable. We’re trying to make the science part easy.”
The 2025 Do it Best Spring Market hits the road again, taking place in Orlando March 21-23.
