ACE HARDWARE REPORT
Westlake Ace goes ‘yard’ Dealer builds on a foundational category By Tim Burke Ace Hardware Corp. executives for years have hammered on the importance of backyard and BBQ to the success of a hardware store. It’s one of the co-op’s “Famous for Four” family of priorities (along with paint, home preservation, an holidays and trim.) Fixing up a backyard has been going on for as long as people first sprawled out to the suburbs. Lately though, it’s been more about bringing new choices and more options to the homeowners’ personalized backyard paradise, as the pandemic-induced nesting phenomenon settled over the nation. More customers are at home working and spending family time together, not only indoors but outdoors in —where else — their backyards. This has blown up the ideas and options to make the backyard over into an outdoor grilleria, a playland, a vegetable garden, a workspace, and a glorious retreat full of options and dreams realized —all of it, sometime altogether — and hardware finds its place, perfectly fitting with the backyarding movement. Westlake Ace Hardware is out in front of the backyarding trend. “Customer interest in the outdoor living category has been growing steadily for several years,” said Laura Byrne-Harris, senior director, merchandising & marketing at Kansas City-based Westlake Ace Hardware. “With the COVID-related lockdowns of 2020, the category grew significantly as consumers found themselves at home more.” As such, she said, homeowners reallocated portions of their personal budgets from travel to the products
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“Backyarding is here to stay,” said Kansas City-based Westlake Ace Hardware Senior Director of Merchandising & Marketing Laura Byrne-Harris. Beyond an outdoor workspace, people have discovered a retreat full of options, such as gardening, cooking, and a getaway space to simply relax and dream.
they could use at home to create beautiful, multi-functional outdoor spaces where they could work, play, relax, and entertain. “The backyarding trend carried over into 2021, and we don’t see any signs of it declining,” Byrne-Harris said. Westlake Ace owns and operates 151 stores in 12 states, including California, Illinois, Iowa, North Carolina and Washington. Generations have shopped at the 116-year-old hardware. Westlake has been part of the Ace Hardware Cooperative since 1959. Westlake Ace is not only Ace’s largest dealer member, it’s also a wholly owned Ace subsidiary, and has been since 2012. This yarding trend is rekindled partly by homeowners’ desire to create a dream space back there. But how do
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 HARDWARE + BUILDING SUPPLY DEALER
hardware stores ‘find a spot at the fire bowl’ so to speak to best support their customers? Reaching customers can take the form of many channels. Byrne-Harris said: “Westlake Ace has promoted the backyarding trend by employing several marketing channels, including print advertising, local market media relations, and social media to reach consumers.” They have focused their marketing efforts on outdoor living products such as BBQ grills, outdoor lighting, live goods, and accessories. As people return to more inperson activities at stores, she said, “interactive demos and sampling events will play a big role in customer outreach at our 151 neighborhood locations. BBQ grills, accessories, sauces, and rubs will play a big part
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