Facts About Ace Hardware That Only Savvy Shoppers Know

Ace Hardware is one of the largest retailer-owned hardware cooperatives in the world. The company operates more than 5,000 stores across the United States and the world. While you can shop online through the website, if you visit a local Ace Hardware store, you'll have the opportunity to interact with members of your community. The company strives to offer a more personal touch than other hardware and home improvement stores.

Ace Hardware is a great place to buy tools, hardware, and building supplies. They also sell paint, lighting, garden tools, outdoor accessories, home decor, and more. Whether you're planning a small DIY project or undertaking a major home renovation, you can find what you'll need to complete the task online or at your local Ace Hardware store. After all, their slogan is that they're "the helpful place" and has self-proclaimed their employees "the helpful hardware folks." Before shopping with Ace Hardware, keep reading to learn more about the company and what makes them unique from other retailers.

Founded in 1924, Ace is only a few years away from celebrating being in business for 100 years. In 2014, as Ace Hardware was celebrating its 90th anniversary, Business Wire highlighted some interesting facts about the company. At that time, Ace Hardware operated over 4,800 stores in the United States and other parts of the world. A team of 100,000 associates kept these stores running and delivered expert advice and customer service to their customers.

At the time of the company's 90th anniversary, the president and CEO, John Venhuizen, explained that the Ace Hardware family shared a common purpose and values that contributed to their success. Indeed, in 2014, Ace Hardware was seeing strong growth. Their total revenue had grown 8.2% over the prior year. Moreover, the company's net income also increased to $104.5 million, a 28% growth from 2013. Both of these were record-setting numbers for Ace Hardware.

Ace Hardware had a bit of a unique start. Rather than having a single founder or a pair of founders like many other companies, Ace was founded by four different individuals. As Central Coast Ace Hardware shares, in 1924, Richard Hesse, E. Gunnard Lindquist, Franke Burke, and Oscar Fisher banded together to start the company. They had the shared goal of being able to place bulk orders for merchandise to in turn sell to customers.

By being able to order in bulk, they would be able to get lower prices on the items to build their inventories. Not only would this mean higher profits for each individual store owner, but it also gave them a better chance of competing against some of the larger stores in the area that were able to offer lower prices. In 1928, the company they founded was incorporated. Business Wire explains that while the company was initially called Ace Stores, it changed its name to Ace Hardware Corporation in 1931.

According to the National Independent Hardware Association of America, Richard Hesse, the president and one of the founders of Ace Hardware, retired from the company in 1973. Under Hesse's leadership, Ace Hardware had seen huge growth. By 1959, their sales had tripped from what they had been in the late 1940s.

After Hesse retired, the company was sold to the various retailers operating its different storefront locations. With this sale, Ace became a retailer-owned cooperative. The National Cooperative Business Association CLUSA International explains that with a retailer-owned cooperative, local owners can combine their resources, increasing the overall power of the group. Each local retailer is involved in making decisions for the cooperative, rather than top-down business models where a few executives make all major decisions. One benefit of doing business with a retailer-owned cooperative is that individual store owners are more likely to look for ways to meet the needs of their local communities. They may also be more dedicated to delivering top-notch customer service or reliable products than some other retailers.

While technically a retailer-owned cooperative, Ace Hardware can also be seen as a franchise, as Franchise Times explains. In 2022, the company earned 5th place in the Franchise Times' list of the top 500 franchise opportunities. According to Ace Hardware, the company has consistently placed in the top 10 for this list over the past several years. Prior to jumping to number five in 2020, they spent four years in a row ranked at number six.

The leadership of the company's CEO, John Venhuizen, seems to have contributed to Ace's solid growth and performance. After seeing five years' worth of growth in 2020 during the pandemic, Venhuizen encouraged other members of the company to develop a growth plan to maintain the pace and continue growing. His plan was successful, as Ace Hardware saw another increase in sales in 2021.

Because Ace Hardware is a retailer-owned cooperative, its business model offers some benefits over more traditional franchises. The store owners are shareholders in the company, giving them more decision-making power than other franchise owners. Moreover, because each store is not technically a franchise, there are no royalty fees or franchise fees to worry about.

According to Wiser Directory, Ace Hardware founded the Ace Hardware Foundation in 1991. The Ace Hardware Foundation strives to offer support to local communities by acting as the "Helpful Place." The 501(c) 3 organization looks for ways to help local communities through contributions to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and the American Red Cross.

One way the foundation works to raise funds for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals is through its Round Up for Kids program. Through this program, customers can round up their purchases to the nearest dollar. The proceeds are donated to local hospitals to directly benefit the members of the community. In 2020, the Round Up for Kids program raised more than $7 million dollars for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. In addition to this program, Ace also holds in-store fundraising events to donate even more to kids in need. Another fundraising initiative of the Ace Hardware Foundation is the Ace Helpful Fund. This fund is designed to provide financial support for Ace Hardware employees who are going through a hard time, grieving a death in the family, or rebuilding after a natural disaster.

Ace Hardware has continued to grow over recent years. Cision PR Newswire shared that as of October, the company had opened 130 new storefront locations in 2022. They also had plans in place to open 40 or more additional stores over the last quarter of the year. These new stores and their owners are now part of the largest retailer-owned hardware cooperative, which operates in all 50 states in the United States along with 65 countries. There are now over 5,600 Ace Hardware store locations.

Ace Hardware's President and CEO shared his pride in all that the company has been achieving and praised local store owners for their hard work in implementing the company's vision. He also shared that customers seem to like the more personal feel of shopping with a local store. He also pointed out that 70% of orders placed on AceHardware.com are picked up in the store, rather than being ordered for shipping and delivery.

Even during these challenging times with inflation and lingering supply chain problems, Ace Hardware managed to receive the highest ranking for customer satisfaction with home improvement retailers, according to J.D. Power. The customer satisfaction study run by J.D. Power asked individuals to rate their experience in five different categories. These include the staff and service, their in-store experience, their online experience, the merchandise they purchased, and the price they were charged. Interestingly, customer satisfaction saw an increase across many other home improvement retailers, but none of the other home improvement stores were able to beat the high marks that put Ace Hardware in the top position on the survey.

2022 wasn't the first year that Ace Hardware ranked at the top of this list, either. In fact, over the past 16 years, Ace Hardware has placed first in this customer satisfaction study 15 times. One way that Ace Hardware really stood out compared to several other retailers on their list was in their scores for staff and service. This metric matches the company's goal of providing personalized service to each of its customers.

Every year for the past 10 years, Ace Hardware has recognized two of its stores as being the "Coolest Hardware Store" in the company. According to Ace Hardware, this award was created to recognize the efforts of store owners to meet the unique needs of the customers in their local community. As mentioned previously, the company places a high emphasis on delivering personalized service to each customer. This award category is just one way that they have chosen to highlight the measures that some of their store owners are taking to deliver exceptional levels of service and uniqueness.

In 2022, the two 'coolest' stores were Ace of the South (Gardendale, Alabama) and Valley Ace Hardware (Westcliffe, Colorado). You can learn more about the stores that have received this coveted award from the company on Ace's website. There are short video clips for each featured store, allowing you to catch a glimpse of what makes them so cool.