INTERVIEW
Paint, coolers, pizza ovens and lawnmowers. Ace Hardware store owners display what works for their market with more options online. might create a lasting relationship where somebody wants to continue and work for your service center for years and years. But there is a shortage of that type of skill set and it can be tough for certain markets especially if you’ re in a very rural market that just the population density can be challenging.
OPE +: I want to talk about landscaping and lawn care for just a minute. You introduced the ACE YardRx program. Does it factor in equipment and actual hands-on work at a site? Flentge: We launched YardRx this year. Basically you enter your address, it shows an overhead view of your house and your property, takes into account how much product you would need based off of potential grass area. It gives you a prescription or subscription of products that you would need to maintain that lawn. And in the future, yes, I do see that at some point in time we will roll this out to other categories or incorporate other categories. Obviously power equipment going right hand in hand with lawn care and the fertilizer / control side of the business. Flentge: We have a lot of Ace Rewards customers out there that we can help prescribe or recommend products that would be useful for what types of projects that they’ re doing. I think OPE is probably the natural secondary progression from that program.
OPE +: Talk a little bit about the customer mix overall and how much, how many pro users are shopping at Ace Hardware stores? Flengte: Specifically to the OPE side, it’ s a decent balance. It’ s definitely not 50-50. It’ s probably more like 80-20. That’ s 80 % being your general consumer and then 20 % being the landscaper or the pro. I think what’ s interesting about this category is it doesn’ t have to be this grand, huge business. A lot of different versions of a pro consumer or pro user in this space, but I think we set ourselves up really well to attract both. I mean, you think Stihl on the very pro end of things, even from a battery side between Stihl and Ego, there’ s a really good pro landscaper quality of equipment that across both of those vendors and we stock all those products. So I think we’ re set up really well to be able to handle the service of the pro. But the bulk of our business still sits with the residential consumer base. Yeah, I think everybody’ s trying to go after pro and it’ s hard.
Interview edited for length. Check the complete audio file in the OPE People podcast
26 OPE + September 2025 www. OPE-Plus. com