Hardware store and large grill retailer, Ace Hardware, is on pace to open at least 40 more stores this year. They’ve already opened 130 stores so far in 2022 and with the Q4 openings it will bring their total store count to over 5,640.
With 130 new stores already opened for the year, we remain enthusiastically bullish about the continued prospect for new store growth. I applaud our local Ace owners for the pace with which they’ve integrated our digital efforts with our physical assets. Seventy percent of acehardware.com orders are picked up in store and 20% are delivered to customers by our own red vested heroes, thus further advancing the relevance and necessity of our neighborhood stores.
Ace Hardware President and CEO, John Venhuizen
Headquartered in Oak Brook, IL, Ace has stores in all 50 states and in 65 countries, with sales over $20 billion. In just the past five years they’ve opened more than 900 stores around the world.
Ace hasn’t reported their Q3 2022 earnings yet, but they were seeing nominal growth through Q2. Their topline growth was fed by store openings with 2.7% growth year-over-year. With important categories like grills down, same-store sales were up 0.6% at stores that track it.
The increase in revenue was helped by price increases of 11.4% driving average ticket sizes up 8.0%. This offset the number of same-store transactions being down 6.9% on the quarter.