Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
In its March 2 issue, Forbes magazine recognizes Ace Hardware as a business success story and highlights a thriving chain of Ace stores.
Ace is now a $4.7 billion co-op with thousands of locally owned stores, despite massive changes to retail such as the spread of Wal-Mart across the country and the launch of Amazon, the article says.
Forbes describes the life of a family-owned Ace chain in Chicago as an example of how the co-op has survived and thrived. Store owners Jeremy Melnick and Les Melnick of Gordon’s Ace Hardware operate a six-store chain that started with one Chicago location in 1950. Now, about 20 Home Depot stores compete with the Melnick family stores, but the small Ace stores are still doing well.
“Entrepreneurs with a deep knowledge of their local market, inventory fine-tuned to a neighborhood’s demographic and the sort of exacting customer service a typical big-box store with low pay and high employee turnover just can’t match” are Ace’s winning characteristics, as exemplified by the Melnicks, Ace CEO John Venhuizen told Forbes.
Gordon’s Ace Hardware competes on small scale in ways the big box stores can’t. For example, the chain sells a wide variety of lightbulbs, and Jeremy Melnick “knows the make and model of bathroom faucets installed in every condo complex and apartment building within a short drive of all his Chicago stores,” the article says.
Read the Forbes article here.
