Winning - In business, we keep score with money, which means we get paid to perform. To do that, we must compete and win and have a lot of fun doing it. At Ace, we win with and through people, for helpful is our weapon in the world.
Excellence - Excellence honors God and inspires people. We aspire to be the best, to continuously improve and to inspire others by giving the team our very best. Love - Love the people, love the work and love the results.
Integrity - For Ace to win, we need to be able to trust each other. And trust will require us to be honest, reliable, caring, of high character and of unquestioned ethics. Gratitude - We recognize that we are blessed to be in the business of serving others. Humility - We strive for greatness with a humble, modest and respectful attitude.
Teamwork - We will fight the natural tendency for control and credit in favor of collaboration and mutual success, recognizing that Together, We are Ace. It's Working Each Ace Hardware store competes differently depending on their situation. Service - We can compete with big boxes with knowledgeable associates and the entrepreneurial spirit of its owners. Convenience - Ace stores can be found right in the neighborhood and combine a quick, in-and-out shopping experience with fast checkout.
Our Support Ace has a team of experts to assist you in converting as well as running a successful business. Request More Information. Surprisingly good. And so is Ace Hardware's bottom line. The Oak Brook, Ill. The reason for success, explains Ace CEO John Venhuizen, a charismatic year-old who speaks with the fervor of a preacher, is store owners like the Melnicks: 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.
Jeremy 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 --a boon in attracting fellow small business owners, like local plumbers, to Ace. And I'll tell you, it's exceedingly hard. Jeremy knows his stores' strengths. He doesn't sell lumber. For that you can go to Home Depot or Lowe's.
He does sell what seems like every kind of lightbulb in production. When a bulb blows he knows you'd rather grab a new one from your local Ace than navigate the labyrinthine aisles of a big box or wait in the dark for an Amazon delivery.
The company's co-op business model means its store owners are its only shareholders. It's the opposite of a franchise system: Thousands of entrepreneurs like the Melnicks band together to boost their collective buying power and reduce costs.
He or she can purchase any of the 80,odd products from the co-op's warehouses, make use of the well-known red-and-white logo and branding "The helpful place," its motto promises and receive dividends based on purchases rather than equity. In the past 18 months Ace has seen some stores jump ship from competitors, including a handful from its two fellow hardware co-ops, True Value and Do It Best. Following a trend that began in retail foods, Ace introduced a line of private label products in the early s.
Private label products enable retailers to offer their customers a consistently low-priced product while generating higher profit margins for themselves. One of Ace's first private label goods was paint, which it began manufacturing in in a state-of-the-art facility in Illinois Ace paint had been manufactured by the Valspar Corp.
Although paint is generally considered a low-growth commodity, it is a do-it-yourself mainstay. Low brand loyalty and high price sensitivity made it an ideal private label product. By the early s, Ace's paint division was expanding faster than the rest of the paint industry, and had become the foundation of a private-label program of nearly 7, items. In , the paint facility expanded, and in , a second paint facility was acquired in Chicago Heights, Illinois.
From to , private label sales grew at an average annual rate of The group planned to transform its private label into a national brand through extensive promotions in the mids. The company became involved in a product labeling suit with the Attorney General of the state of California for neglecting to warn consumers that several of Sherwin-Williams' paints contained toluene, a known carcinogen.
The board laid out four primary objectives to be achieved by the year improved retail performance, more efficient operations, international growth, and a faster pace for new store openings.
A key aspect of Ace's plan involved incentives for dealers to meet certain standards or risk losing full retail support from the corporation. These requirements included relinquishing connections with any other buying organizations, making at least 80 percent of merchandise purchases through Ace including and especially Ace paint , using Ace signage, and participating with vendors on special purchases. By late , about 1, of Ace's 5, dealers did not comply with these minimum requirements. One Ace executive noted that this list of noncompliant retailers would gradually be reduced, as they either joined the majority of dealers or dropped from the organization.
As part of its plan to improve retail performance, Ace also announced that it would open its own stores in the Chicago area to test retail concepts, an objective it achieved in by The purpose of these stores was to fine-tune retailing practices for all Ace stores.
A new store prototype called the 'solutions concept store' catered to the do-it-yourselfer, and was pioneered in Although the company assured its members that it was not planning to acquire or build a significant number of group-owned stores, this aspect of 'Ace ' disturbed some dealers, according to a December article in Do-It-Yourself Retailing. Ace planned to deploy consultants to help retailers identify potential new store sites.
Ace's strategic plan also called for improvements in its warehousing operation through technological advances and increased cooperation with vendors. Goals included vendor consolidation; enhanced electronic data interchange between vendors, warehouses, and retailers; and the expansion of vendor-managed inventory systems to control up to one-fourth of inventory.
This was done in order to meet anticipated demand from the 70 Mexican Ace stores that were open by that time, and the 26 more that were expected to open. Sales overseas had increased by nearly one-third overall from to , and by more than 60 percent in Mexico alone.
According to Do-It-Yourself Retailing, Ace hoped to 'evolve from being only an exporter to becoming a true world trading company,' by offering international affiliates the services enjoyed by dealers in the United States. Licensing was seen to play an important role in the organization's overseas expansion. The promulgation of the goals of Ace and The New Age of Ace exemplified two fundamental changes in the organization and the retail hardware industry.
First, by the s, Ace had clearly expanded its expectations of and responsibilities to its affiliates. Second, it demonstrated the organization's determination to survive and grow in the face of increasingly intense competition from what one industry journal called 'the big boxes'--mass home improvement merchants, such as Home Depot, Builders Square, and Lowe's.
As CEO Roger Peterson, who retired in May , told Do-It-Yourself Retailing in December , 'Such growth is necessary if Ace is to remain a major player in the hardware industry, capitalize on the Ace name and reputation, and establish footholds in markets before competition gains a strangle hold. By the late s, however, the co-op felt itself increasingly challenged by the rollout of Home Depot's small-store format, Villager's Hardware, designed to capitalize on the 'convenience' hardware market in which Ace specialized.
The company responded with new initiatives and new ventures. In , it debuted a new strategic plan called 'Encore Growth,' and, a year later, 'Vision
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