History
Ace Hardware was founded in 1924 by Richard Hesse, E. Gunnard Lindquist, Frank Burke, and Oscar Fisher in Chicago, Illinois. Ace Hardware, incorporated in 1928 as Ace Stores Inc., was founded to provide a centralized purchasing organization to supply the founders' and members' stores. The company was named after the Ace fighter pilots of World War I, who were able to overcome all odds. Its retail network expanded to hundreds of dealers by 1949, when annual sales reached about $10 million.
After Hesse retired in 1973, Ace was sold to its retailers, becoming a cooperative, and the headquarters moved to suburban Oak Brook. Independent owners became dealer-owners and shareholders in the company. Because it is a co-op and not a franchise, each Ace Hardware store looks different. Ace has placed a focus on Ace stores exhibiting some similar characteristics, such as signaled and core product lines. The Vision 21 program, as this is called, is aimed to make all stores look recognizable as an Ace Hardware.
Ace Hardware's long-time slogan The helpful hardware place has been replaced by The helpful place. Another change came when its longtime jingle — "Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man" — was modified with the more gender-neutral "folks" replacing "man." Much of their advertising since 1987 features John Madden, a former NFL coach and announcer. In some commercials, he uses football quotes.
Prior to Madden, Suzanne Somers was a spokesperson for Ace Hardware but was dropped because of a previously issued topless poster for Maheraja water skis. Home improvement expert Lou Manfredini currently serves as ACE's "Helpful Hardware Man" and media spokesperson.
Ray Griffith currently serves as the President and CEO of Ace Hardware Corporation and has served in that position since taking over for Dave Hodnik in 2005. Hodnik had served as ACE's leader since 1996. David Ziegler serves as Chairman of the Board. ACE Hardware Corporation now does over $3 billion in hardware sales annually and had $12.5 billion in retail sales during 2007.
Read more about this topic: Ace Hardware
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)