Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
Ace Hardware’s year-old RedVest Media network has now influenced more than $100 million in Ace retail sales as the company expands the vendor-funded program with new ways to reach customers—and potentially drive more business through its locally owned stores.
Ace introduced RedVest Media to its vendor community at the 2025 Ace Fall Convention in Chicago before formally launching the retail media network days later. A year later, on the heels of the 2026 Ace Fall Convention in Orlando and a recent expansion of the program, NHPA spoke with Molly Hjelm, corporate vice president and head of RedVest Media, about how the network has developed and what it means for Ace retailers.
More than 100 vendors have joined RedVest since its launch, Hjelm says. The program gives vendors a centralized way to advertise products through Ace’s digital ecosystem while using Ace Rewards data to measure whether customers exposed to those messages ultimately make purchases. That ecosystem includes advertising on Acehardware.com, email and push messaging, as well as offsite display, video, connected TV and mobile advertising.
“With RedVest, all of our retailers benefit from an influx of marketing, driving awareness and foot traffic to their stores as a result of vendors investing to message their products,” Hjelm says.
RedVest is funded by participating vendors, which use the network to promote products sold through Ace. For individual retailers, there is no RedVest campaign to build or advertising buy to manage. The store-level benefit comes when vendor-funded marketing increases awareness of products available through Ace and helps turn that interest into purchases through local stores.
Reaching Ace Customers at Scale
RedVest addresses a particular challenge created by Ace’s cooperative structure. A vendor seeking greater visibility across thousands of independently owned stores could traditionally work through buying shows, corporate promotional opportunities and individual retailer relationships. RedVest adds a centralized option for reaching known Ace customers across the cooperative.
“RedVest streamlines the process for brands to communicate with Ace customers and retailers at scale,” Hjelm says. “Navigating a 5,300-store co-op has its challenges.”
The network can address different sales and merchandising objectives. A new product may need broader awareness. An established line may need additional visibility when customers are shopping online. Advertising can also be used to increase conversion on core product lines or help customers discover products on Ace’s digital shelf.
RedVest can also connect vendors directly with retailers. Its RetailerReach capability allows eligible vendors to reach Ace and Emery Jensen retailers through retailer-facing banners, emails and educational content. That gives manufacturers another avenue for building retailer awareness of products and potentially increasing store-level distribution.
Ace expanded RedVest’s capabilities this summer following feedback from participating vendors. Among the additions announced at the network’s inaugural Upfront event in August were social and influencer marketing, weather-triggered programmatic advertising and advertising within Ace’s storefront on DoorDash.
The weather capability has a natural connection to hardware retail. Advertising can respond to local conditions such as rainfall or snowfall, allowing vendors to promote products when weather creates a timely household or project need.
DoorDash offers access to a different customer segment—those who can access Ace products through DoorDash who had not previously shopped inside an Ace store. Those customers can include people with immediate needs for products such as propane or firewood, giving vendors another opportunity to reach shoppers beyond Ace’s traditional digital and store traffic.
Measuring What Happens After the Ad
For Ace retailers, an important part of RedVest happens after customers see the advertising.
Ace Rewards provides the foundation for what the advertising industry calls closed-loop measurement: connecting exposure to an advertisement with a subsequent purchase. Instead of judging a campaign primarily by impressions or clicks, RedVest can help Ace and participating vendors determine whether customers exposed to advertising went on to buy the product.
“Our Ace Rewards loyalty program is at the heart of our ability to connect the dots between advertising exposure and purchase,” Hjelm says. “We have real-time vendor-facing reporting that allows the advertiser and Ace to see sales from customers exposed to the media.”
The network is expanding those measurements. Vendors can examine return on advertising spend and total sales impact, identify the percentage of converted customers who are new to their brand and compare the performance of different products, advertising placements and creative approaches.
RedVest has also added what’s known as incrementality measurement for offsite advertising. This feature is designed to determine whether advertising produced additional sales that likely would not have occurred without the campaign, rather than simply showing that someone saw an ad and later made a purchase.
For vendors, that information can guide decisions about where to put future advertising dollars and which products or messages perform best. For Ace, it provides another way to evaluate whether vendor marketing is translating into business across the cooperative.
Hjelm says RedVest’s expansion will continue to be guided by vendor feedback and by reaching Ace customers where they are spending their time.
“We’ve been riding a rocketship of growth,” she says, pointing to the more than 100 vendors that have joined the network. Over the next three years, Hjelm says the goal is for RedVest to become an increasingly significant contributor to Ace’s growth while continuing to produce returns for participating vendors.
For local retailers, most of the technology and media buying remains behind the scenes. The value proposition at store level is more straightforward: vendors put additional marketing dollars behind products sold at Ace, RedVest helps those messages reach relevant customers and the network measures whether that attention turns into sales.
