Rona (company) - Rona "big Box" Stores

Rona "big Box" Stores

In the 1990s, under competitive pressure from The Home Depot and other big box retailers, Rona established the Rona Home & Garden stores.

Rona Home & Garden stores are large, ranging from 85,000 to 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2), with a warehouse-style similar to The Home Depot and Lowe's.

While The Home Depot and Lowe's stores are all company owned, Rona Home & Garden stores are a combination of corporately owned and franchised, despite the massive investment required to build such a store. As big box home improvement stores entered the market, Rona countered by bringing together successful owners of small Rona affiliate stores in Quebec to invest in one or more big box format stores. Many Rona Home & Garden locations in that province thus have local ownership, a tradition of the family hardware store, and a great deal of flexibility to adapt to the market at store level. Most of Rona's big-box format stores in the rest of Canada are entirely corporate-owned.