Local Brand Building at Scale with Ace Hardware's Kim Lefko

Kim Lefko (00:00)
I'm Kim Lefko, CMO of Ace Hardware, and you are listening to CPG Guys Podcast.

PVSB (00:09)
Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast. I am your gregarious co-host, PVSB. I also moonlight as head of

Industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the Commerce Acceleration Division of Omnicom. My co-host, he's the father of pop stars Rhea Raj and Katseye's Lara Raj. The fans call him of course, Papa Raj. He's also the chief revenue officer at Think Blue Consulting. More importantly, he is my ride or die BFF. A man known as Sri is unfortunately unable to join us today due to some renovations going on at his house that are.

causing a mass amounts of distractions. So he sends his regrets. I want to remind our audience, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform, be it Apple, Spotify, YouTube, whatever. And in particular, if you're on Apple or Spotify, we would really like it if you gave us a rating. A rating will help increase the visibility of our podcasts, make it more findable by industry contemporaries of yours who are looking to be both educated and entertained. We hope we do both of those.

Now, when you're there, our favorite number is five. You can choose whatever number you want, but we like five, but it does help us with making this podcast a little bit more reachable by people. So enough with our boilerplate. I want to get to our guest today. We're sitting down with someone who has spent her career at the intersection of iconic consumer brands and bold marketing transformation. Kim Lefko, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer at Ace Hardware. Ace Hardware is the world's largest retailer owned hardware cooperative.

And Kim has been at the helm of its marketing engine since 2018, leading the brand's global marketing and advertising efforts. And of course, digital initiatives before joining ACE. She held marketing leadership roles at Weber grills and Greco children's products, accumulating over two decades of experience driving growth across both products and service. Categories. I think what makes Kim such a compelling voice for our audience is how she's applying a data-driven omnichannel mindset.

to a century old cooperative retail model and winning. Kim, welcome to the CPG guys. How you doing?

Kim Lefko (02:08)
It's great to be here. Thanks for having us.

PVSB (02:11)
that is great. We're so excited. Now, you know, we had your colleague, Molly Jelm, who I've known for the better part of, God, I think it's like 16 years now, to shock. as she was introducing RedBest media to, to our audience. So we're really excited to, she, she had recommended you to come on. So we're really excited about our conversation to talk about how what she does fits into the broader marketing.

What I'm going to ask our audience to do as we go on with this conversation is toggle over to the digital show notes of this episode. You will find a link to Kim's LinkedIn page, to Red Vest Media's website, and also to Ace Hardware's LinkedIn page where you can learn a little more as we go about our conversation. Sound good? All right. ⁓ All right. So let's get, let's get, now I made a reference to this. You've had a career that spans some pretty iconic brands like Weber and Greco.

Kim Lefko (02:55)
All

PVSB (03:03)
before moving to the retail side of days. I'd love to know how that journey shaped the kind of marketing leader that you are today, pivotal moments maybe in your experience and really what pulled you into this hardware co-op.

Kim Lefko (03:18)
Yeah, it's, I feel very blessed that I've worked on such iconic and loved brands. I often joke that if you're going to be in the world of marketing, work on brands that have strong affinity groups. And you think about DeWalt Power Tools, that just an avid, passionate following of consumers found the same thing at Weber grills and even even Graco Children's products, like moms and dads are passionate about, you know, the car seat and safety.

But all of these just loved iconic brands. And so if the job to be done in marketing is to build the love and demand for these products, it's great that there's already a kickstart behind each one of them. Yeah, the shift over to retail has been a lot of fun. And I've been very accustomed to calling on retailers like and selling to retailers like Ace and Home Depot and Lowe's and the others.

And when you are a brand selling to retail, you have a hard time understanding why can't you take the entire product line? Why can't you offer, you know, ⁓ carry every single price point? And now sitting on the ACE side, you know, the average store at ACE is 12,000 square feet, and you can't carry 20 items from one brand. And so that idea of you have to, as a retailer,

have the discernment of what's best for the consumer. Having them in mind is really important. Now, one thing that I see great value in, in any brand listening, any vendor partner to a key retailer, is when you offer a level of exclusivity or differentiation to the retailer, that matters. And we say it all the time, differentiate or die, differentiate or die, and it's so true.

So as a retailer, at ACE, we have set ourselves up. We believe we can be the preferred destination for paint, power tools, and barbecue, outdoor power equipment as well. And we carry the best brands in each one of those respective categories. And if a brand gives us some level of differentiation or exclusive and we're building a commercial, what product do you think we want to put on that commercial or the front of an advertisement? The product that we have that our competitors don't. So

It's been a lot of fun to sit on both sides and I now have probably a better view and appreciation of both challenges.

PVSB (05:41)
you the most in that transition.

So, Kim, I know for me what it was like moving from the brand side to the retailer side and what particularly I found to be surprising or different from my experience. I want to hear your story. What for you was one of the biggest ahas moving over to the retailer side having worked on iconic brands?

Kim Lefko (06:11)
It's, you know, the biggest surprise and probably not a surprise, but an appreciation is it doesn't happen on a whim. Like you, on the, on the brand side, when you're selling a product in, you don't realize all the moves necessary. And you've got to be thinking about fulfillment. You've got to be thinking about how it fits with the line logic. You got to think about seasonal change and working down a big inventory, like all of those complexities.

And it is what a lot of people may not realize about ACE is we're a co-op, which means the stores are individually owned and together they own ACE as an enterprise and they can make a decision on what they want to carry and not carry. So that sell-in process is so rooted in this is going to be good for you. We've tested this and here's the data to support why it would be best for you to carry this product.

All the nuances and all the details, you just don't want to pay attention to that when you're selling product to a retailer. But once you get on the retail side, those details matter to make sure that the shopping experience for the consumer isn't compromised. And also our ACE retailers are put in the forefront that this is going to be good for them. And we've done the necessary testing to show that.

PVSB (07:29)
And for people who don't live in the hardware world, what makes ACE fundamentally different from other national retailers, both big box and neighborhood stores? There's so Let's go. Let's dig in.

Kim Lefko (07:40)
How much time do you have?

I'm a huge, huge fan. think Ace is one of the most distinct and special retailers out there because it blends national. Everyone knows Ace. We've been around for a hundred years, but it also blends and merges with this local relevance. So here are some fun facts on Ace. You we have over 5,200 stores across the country.

And when you look at just the sheer number, it's more than our two largest competitors combined. And the other is the proximity. Like we are ubiquitous to homes. 80 % of US households are within 15 minutes of an A store. And that proximity just allows us to truly be in the fabric of neighborhoods across the country. And so with that, what makes us unique, and I just mentioned that the store has autonomy to decide what they want to sell, what they want to promote, what they want to do.

is when you walk into an A store in Boston and you walk into an A store in California or in Tampa, you're going to have a different shopping experience. There's the mainstay of national brands that we're going to promote and every store is going to carry, but there's also going to be a local feel based on that community. You may find a line of fishing products in Florida and a line of disc golf products in a store in California. And that

That uniqueness, I think, is really, really special in retail today. It's not a one-size-fits-all.

PVSB (09:13)
I'm going to tell you my ACE hardware story. My local hardware store here in Guilford, Connecticut is Page Hardware, which is part of the ACE family. And the reason we love it, they hide in the store a stuffed hammerhead shark for the kids to find. one, what I love about is when they never put it in an aisle with sharp tools or anything else like that, it's always in one of what I'd call a more safe aisle.

But the kids can go in and if they can find it, they run up to the front register and they get a little treat. Maybe it's a Tootsie Roll, maybe it's a sticker, but we can't go downtown with my daughter saying we're going into Ace and what happens when I'm in there? I'm going to buy something. I'm just down. So it makes my daughter happy. They drive a sale. It's an integral part of my shopping experience in downtown Guilford, Connecticut. So enough of that.

Kim Lefko (10:05)
That's really, that's great to hear.

PVSB (10:07)
It is absolutely phenomenal. But back to my point on the fundamental difference, how does that difference really hone your focus on marketing? How does that kind of translate into your marketing message phrase?

Kim Lefko (10:21)
Yeah, it's, we're extremely focused because, I often say we're never going to outspend our well-funded huge competitors, but our consistency is our superpower. And so that's a major fundamental in the way that we think about marketing is we're going to be consistent in our drum beat of, I mentioned earlier, we believe A's has the right to be the preferred destination for paint, power tools, outdoor power equipment, and backyards and barbecue.

So we put a huge focus in those respective categories and products. The other is when we think about the nuance of marketing and how it's a little bit different than other retailers is we have to balance this national, we wanna build the brand, we wanna build the consideration, we wanna drive traffic in to all 5,200 stores across the country, but we also wanna give some local autonomy to the local store so they can market what's relevant in their market.

Now, nationally, we do all the TV advertising. We do significant digital marketing investment, which I'm sure we'll get into. And we do a lot behind our ACE Rewards loyalty program. At the local level, we think that's an incredible opportunity for them to have their own unique platform to do experiential events, do a lot of promoting through social media. And we have a chosen platform partner, which makes social media. You don't have to be a marketing expert to run an ACE store.

But we do have the platform and tools there that they can be present in caring for their customer in an important channel like social media. So that balance, I think that's what makes our marketing challenge two big marketing challenges. We don't have the funds, we've got to be very, very focused and consistent. And we also have to balance this national presence brand job also with local horsepower and locally relevant marketing.

PVSB (12:14)
Well, you opened the door to digital conversation, so I'm going to walk right through that door. Ace may not be the first retailer people think of when they hear of digital scale, but you do have significant site traffic and a pretty innovative app. How would you describe Ace's journey to digital maturity and where are you in that journey?

Kim Lefko (12:34)
Yeah, that's, I love that question. And you're right. A hundred year old brand, the way people think about ACE Hardware, we're working hard to be so relevant to the way customers gather information, how they shop in the world today, and ensuring that we deliver on what convenience means to them. And so every year it's the July timeframe, everyone does a strategy session and our CEO does two things that I love. One is we do a session on

productive paranoia. Now, just being paranoid would be bad, but being productively paranoid is a really good exercise for executives or functional leaders. And so within the world of marketing, our productive paranoia is like, how is the consumer changing? How is the market changing? How are, how consumers are living? How is that changing? And as you think about those change behaviors, how does that influence the way we connect and engage and build a relationship with consumers?

So that productive paranoia is really a good exercise for every marketer or any business leader to do every year. And then the second is just the changing behavior of our competitors, of our consumers. So you merge those two things and it was about 10 years ago that we said, wow, 80 % at the time, 80 % of shopping starts in that Google search bar and we're not advertising there. And there was a shift of we've got to stop doing radio.

print circular, we got to shift over and do more in that digital search bar because people don't naturally think of ACE, but if we can send our local inventory feed and when a customer searching for a product, they see that their local ACE has it, we win nine times out of 10 because we're helpful, we're convenient, we're trustworthy. And so that was, that was a significant shift. And as a result, our sales on ACEhardware.com are up 20 % and growing.

We just launched the mobile app. can talk about that because that strategy is unique and different, but that's growing at 40%. So how it started was really a session on productive paranoia. And where we are today is it's a significant investment of being top of mind with consumers.

PVSB (14:49)
Yeah, I think the goal of being where they are when they're searching, when they're thinking about this, I know from my perspective, if I'm online and I'm looking for things, particularly around hardware, it's because I want to do something right now. And what gets me moving is I don't want to wait for a box to come in the mail two days later. If I can drive down to Page Hardware Store and pick up the item because I know it's there, I'm going to do it. And then I get my...

my satisfaction achieved right when I am in the mood to do the project that I need to do. So I'm absolutely with you on that. So I think what's interesting is, well, you can talk about some of these stats, but one of the ones is I was looking at the influence that ACE has on the population. 75 % of US households within a 15-minute drive of an ACE store. That screams to me, convenience.

as I just indicated in terms of what I'm looking for. How are you redefining convenience for your customers and particularly through maybe the digital app itself?

Kim Lefko (15:54)
sure. Convenience in the past, a lot of us would say just proximity. It's in small parking lots in a small store and helpful store associates. I can get down, get in and out pretty quickly. And that's, ⁓ that's advancing significantly to yes, 75, 80 % of US households are within 15 minutes of an ace. Now instead of coming in, if you have it, can you just deliver it to me? That's convenient.

This idea a couple of years ago, we launched in grilling. We're going to become the market share leader in grilling. One of the biggest hassles with buying a grill is you have to assemble it and we're removing that. So if you buy a grill from ACE, we provide free assembly and delivery and put it right on your back deck. That's convenient. And it's very different than the way convenience was defined in the past. We're looking at digital for sure. This idea of, I don't know about you, but a buy online pickup in store.

It's not convenient if you place an order for pickup in store and you have to wait two and a half hours or wait for the alert and you have no idea when your product is going to be ready or your order is going to be ready. It will have it ready before you even get in your car and get down to the store. In 15 minutes, your pickup order will be ready. That's convenient. We're thinking at great lengths, not only about speed, but how do we leverage our knowledge? A big reason people choose A's is I trust you.

You're helpful. You know what you're talking about. And that red-vested hero inside the store, we want customers visiting our store and driving traffic into the store because that knowledgeable associate is going to make your life easier. And that human connection, we're not giving up on it. Just a digital interface is not going to be the end all of the ACE brand experience with consumers.

We like that belly to belly face to face interaction inside our stores too. And the mobile app, we talked about that before we launched the mobile app and it was really about ACE rewards. Our best customer is our ACE rewards customer and they don't want to wait for the mail to come and the coupon to come. They want it all inside their phone. And it's been amazing that mobile app customer shops 50 % more. They spend two times more. They

They receive more perks and in-app benefits than any other customer. We're constantly feeding offers to them that are valuable to them because we have that data of who that customer is and what they're shopping. So holistically, it's a balance of what does convenient mean to our customer? It could be speed, it could be delivery, it could be fast pickup in store, but balance that with what makes ASOS special and that's knowledge and being helpful.

PVSB (18:36)
I think that's very well said. So that's great. Let me remind our audience that today I'm speaking with Kim Lafka. She's the CMO at Ace Hardware. So Kim, I want to talk a little bit about the Elevate Ace format. It's representing a billion dollar investment in re-imagining stores. What do you think this is telling to your supplier community about the future of physical retail?

Kim Lefko (19:01)
Yes, it's, I'm glad you brought this up. It's we are, we're a significant investment in working to get hundreds of stores adopting this new store format. So when you walk into an A store, there's a different feel and it's very experiential. I've said it a hundred times already on this podcast, but this idea of shopping the categories of paint, power, and barbecue. When you walk into a store that has been reformatted with this Elevate format,

you're going to see those brands in those product categories front and center. And what we're finding is it's less about the clutter. It's less about an inundation of a breadth of products. And it's more about the experience of the category, the experience of the brands. And we often say, if you want to build your brand in the heart and mind of consumers, partner with ACE because your brand is our priority. that, you know,

But on my past, you know, past life of building brands, when you went to retailers, there was always a private label brand. There were in-house brands, there were lifestyle brands and national brands like, ⁓ you know, like the ones that I've mentioned. And at Ace, your brand is the most important. So Weber and Big Green Egg and Traeger and Blockstone, they're front and center with no other private label or knockoff brands in the grilling category. And same with Ego and Steel and Craftsman in Milwaukee.

The best brands are what you're gonna find at your local A's and this elevate invention, it's really a reinvention of experiential retail, but it's a major investment for us. You're gonna feel these categories in brand shopping experiences front and center when you walk in.

PVSB (20:43)
Now, you mentioned earlier in our conversation about ACE rewards. You know my background, I came from loyalty. Your colleague Molly and I are cut from the same cloth in many ways. One of ACE's superpowers, at least in my opinion, is the fact that you have a wealth of loyalty data. Not all retailers have it. It allows for a very strong longitudinal view of customer behavior and what I would call propensity purchasing signals.

What's your general philosophy on loyalty and how it builds into your overall marketing strategy?

Kim Lefko (21:18)
It's loyalty is everything. know, in, in I've been in marketing for a hundred years, I'm really old, but I view the job to be done in marketing is three key things. Our job is to capture and drive demand and that demand in store and online. Once that demand and traffic is there, how are we converting those customers to purchase? And then the third step is loyalty, lock them in that they love us and will never leave us.

And those are the three steps. Now the strategies and tactics will change under each one of those key pillars, depending on the year and the technology. But those are the three jobs to be done. Believe the most important is loyalty. Because if you get them into the brand, loving the brand experience, loving what their local store and their digital store has to offer, then they're not, we call it promiscuous. They're not out looking for other retailers to shop.

They stay with you because they love what you represent and they love the value you provide to them as a customer. So our loyalty program, Rewards, has got to be one of the oldest and largest in retail. have 46 million consumers in our Ace Rewards program. They represent a lion's share of the sales that are done. And we did, we just shifted over to a mobile app where the entire Ace Rewards experience can be managed on your phone.

And that our customers love us. know, the ones that are, I always say the re-qualification is a good indication of you're providing value that means something to the shopper. Not to us. It's not about discounts. We're providing valuable insight and value to the shopper. Our re-qualification is 90 % of Ace Rewards members become members year after year after year.

And that means it's not just price, it's we're using that special proprietary information we have on the customer to make sure we're serving up valuable information, not clutter, not noise, at just the right time that's going to remove the hassle for them. So they can have, yeah, I always, I always like to say happiness over hassle. Like that's our job as a marketer.

PVSB (23:28)
I'm thinking back about 10 years, 10 or 12 years ago, back in the day when we used to carry around all of the frequent shopper cards on a key chain. I remember doing some primary research with a bunch of people and I said, okay, let's walk through all the ones on your key chain. What is this? What do you get from this and what do you get from that one? We were lucky if like one, one card.

on that key chain, the person could definitively articulate, well, yeah, I get, I get gas rewards or I get a discount on the, on, off shelf. It's important that it resonate with the consumer because that's what will drive the stickiness. So that seems to be very top of mind to what you're trying to do. I think what's also important is that richness of the data ultimately is what drives your ability.

to build meaningful audiences for brands to be able to have conversations with your shoppers. So in that light, when Molly was on our podcast last August, she indicated that retail media at ACE was your personal executive vision and pitch. I'd love to hear your thoughts behind really what told you it was the right time and the right thing. Why were the conditions perfect for ACE to get into the retail media business?

Kim Lefko (24:44)
Yeah, I love that. I love that question. It's always, it's always a team effort. The we're really late to the game and I'm sure she she talks at length about our advantage of being a late mover. And it is when you're the last one, there's some disadvantages, but there are some great advantages to learn from other mistakes or opportunities, the technologies much further along in advance when when you're one of the last one, I think there are over 200 retail media networks in the market today. And in a word,

joining the party, we were very, very slow and protective to make sure that it was going to be a huge benefit to three parties. One is the customer was number one. We could not say we've got this great ACE rewards program. It's really prime for Red Vest Media and it not be a significant benefit to the customer. So we started there.

The second is brands have too many options. They have a ton of options right now to invest in do partnership investment on 199 other retail media networks. What's going to make ours different, but of great value to the brand that they can grow their business with us. And then ultimately this is about growth for ACE. We want to make the partnerships worthwhile.

that all boats rise. They grow, the brand's investment drives growth and as a result drives preference to shoppies and growth raise. So those three parties, we were very discerning, we were very prudent, time is not gonna push us and what the competitors are doing is not gonna push us into it. And we got the best of the best out there because Molly knows what she's doing and we hired an expert to come in and lead us and guide us and not act like we know exactly how to do this. And I think that was a major.

shift for us. that was really it. We felt we had some data and information on our brands and our consumers to create a more meaningful partnership between that relationship or the brands to their consumer segments that we could drive growth and value to the customer. was really the, there's something here and we should probably explore it.

PVSB (26:55)
And to follow up on that, ⁓ I would say one of the major advantages that you had in terms of at least being late to launch, what allowed you to do that was you had something that brands desperately crave, which is scale. Because you mentioned 250 retail media platforms, not all are equal, right? And you want to go where you're going to get the most impact. I think scale helped. But what else do you think were, from your perspective,

an advantage of waiting until you were ready in terms of being able to deliver something meaningful.

Kim Lefko (27:30)
Yeah, without a doubt, the differentiation that we have where brands would say, yep, I'll partner with you because you have something different. 5200 A stores across the country embedded into every neighborhood. That's a huge competitive advantage. A hundred thousand red vested heroes working inside those stores that actually know the product and we put them through product training and they sell the brands as if the brands are their own. That's meaningful and valuable to a retail media network.

46 million ACE Rewards members and their purchase history that we can leverage proprietary, privately to benefit brand partnerships and connections to their consumer groups. That's a significant value to all involved for a retail media network. And then a website, you know, it's a, we have a $3 billion Omni channel on ACEhardware.com and looking at that digital platform with a mobile app of this is a platform where retail media starts.

But that's not where we want it to end with us. We want it to drive traffic into our store. So those are our competitive differentiators right out of the gate that are only at ACE. Now, now you go find a partner that is already flushed out the technology on a retail media system. And the number one thing I know this from being on the brand side, working with retailers like impossible to get data. Like I just gave you $10 million or however million dollars.

Give me the data of how that's performing through your investment. And information is not readily available. We launched a system that gives you real time data on the campaigns you're investing with Red Vest Media. That's a differentiator. And it's the number one thing we're hearing from our vendor partners today. I love that you're so transparent and so quick to give us the performance of our campaigns with you.

PVSB (29:24)
I can't, I can't underscore that enough. Like if you're a brand, the investment in retail media has gone from the shop or marketing manager up to the CMO. And in many cases, it's now even board level in terms of how you invest against this and being able to get those points of measurement to justify a shift in budget away from traditional linear television and print media. It's critical and it is table stakes now you have to do that.

Kim Lefko (29:54)
It blows my mind that this has got to be one of the top three investment channels in media today. It's over a hundred billion dollars of revenue in media investment running through these platforms to not be going back to being prudent and honorable to the people putting their money in to showcase to them. is the efficacy of your investment. Marketing is no longer what feels good and what looks good.

There's way too much science and data to not share that with your vendor partner in these black boxes that exists across the world of marketing. Make me crazy. And so in launching a platform where our vendor partners could invest, we wanted transparency. And you know what? If a campaign doesn't work, we hit the pause button and we say, all right, what happened? How do we do, how do we do this better the next time around?

PVSB (30:50)
I'd love to give you an opportunity there. ⁓ there any misunderstandings or misconceptions about hardware retail that you'd like to bring light to in terms of how CPG suppliers perceive your business?

Kim Lefko (31:05)
⁓ that's now how much time do you have on this one? I, if you, my first challenge would be this, every single listener, if you haven't been to an ACE hardware store in the past year, I'll even say year, if you haven't been into an ACE hardware store in the past year, get in, get in there, talk to the people, roam the store, ⁓ try to find something, a surprise and delight product that will make your life easier.

But just the experience of ACE, what people perceive and what the reality is, I think is very, very different. We are so relevant. We are so competitive. We are going to be around for a while and we're a viable competitor for retail to be thinking about. And then the other is digital. You said it at the beginning and I, I twinge a little bit when you say you don't think ACE would be the place that's digitally advanced.

Get on our platforms, download the ACE mobile app and search around or get onto ACEhardware.com. And I think those three experiences, you may walk away saying, ⁓ wow, this is a place that I would love to associate myself with. This is a community of people I'd love to support because they are locally owned neighborhood stores in the fabric of your community.

And it becomes personal, yet you're supporting something at the national level as well. And we say that Ace, our purpose is so clear. We exist to serve and help others. Now it started with the red vest, we have knowledge and we want to help you when you come into that store, find the product and finish your project. But the serve and help is so much broader in the give back that our stores are doing inside their neighborhoods and communities.

and the philanthropic selfless hearts of ACT Action in their neighborhood. That's special too. So it's a brand that you're proud to support and proud to represent. It's one of the greatest joys I have in my job.

PVSB (33:03)
I want to talk a little bit before I get to my last question about, about the thinking about ACE as being so digitally forward and prep for our conversation today. spent about half an hour in page just observing shoppers. And the thing that really caught my attention was how many of them, almost three in every four had their smartphone out as they're walking through the aisle, looking at items, referring to that, interacting with the shop people about what they saw in their app.

and what was on the shelf. If you don't understand that a hundred percent of all sales now, to one degree or another, not fully, but they're in some small way digitally influenced and you have not built that type of an experience for understanding that your shoppers come with this really in powerful device in their hands going into a store and you haven't built all the connection points to service that customer journey.

you're not going to win, you're just not going to win. But I do want to finish with what you talked about, which is the purpose being we exist to help others. How exactly are you working to ensure that this purpose really drives the decisions that you're making and that the broader organization is making?

Kim Lefko (34:22)
Yeah, it's, it's innate, ⁓ from our CEO to the individuals in Red Vest inside the stores and inside our distribution centers. It's a, you know, we sometimes say, you know, the fit, do you have the ACE fit? If being helpful is just natural in your DNA, it's a desire of something you want to do. You feel it inside the stores, you feel it inside the RSCs and inside of meeting rooms. We don't have a discussion.

without thinking about what's the benefit to the consumer and does this make the life of our store owners and the teams that support inside the store, does it make their life easier, more efficient and will it drive growth for them? That's all we do day in and day out. And so if you think about all the constituents, we're serving products and promotion and marketing and operating methods to the store to do their job well.

And so we think about them, we always put it through the lens of, will this be effective? Will this drive growth? I think the hardest marketing job in retail is inside of Ace Hardware because we can't mandate anything. We have to prove that it's valuable and that store wants to take the initiative on. And so they're our number one customer. But you walk into an Ace store, it doesn't take you more than a second before someone's saying, what can I help you find today? And most likely they're going to shop with you the entire time.

and get to know you and give you the discounts and give you the, come back next week, this will be on sale or I'll, you know what, we don't have it, I'll get it and I'll drive it out to your house later this afternoon. The level of help and care is off the charts and will be the reason, a hundred years later, people say, know, ACE is still around because they never gave up on the beauty and the benefit of human connection.

PVSB (36:15)
Well said, Kim. Let me remind our listeners, you can find all our content by simply going to a web browser on your phone, on your desktop and typing cpgguys.com as the URL. We want to thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, direct messages, meeting with us at trade shows. We're going to be at Shop Talk later this month.

and a lot of other events coming to our personal events that we host, recording episodes like the one today. And we are always grateful. We have now almost 44,000 followers on LinkedIn. I'm shocked by the fact in such an engaged community. The honest truth is the show doesn't exist without all of you. You work with us all year and we are grateful.

to have you as our audience and for our sponsors as well. My big takeaway is Kim has really articulated how she and her team are working to take a hundred year old retailer cooperative into the 21st century, very digitally forward, but doing so in a way that feels very natural to the customer. That it's intuitive, it still has that personal touch experience, but it's leveraging all of the capabilities.

of the digital age to seamlessly integrate an experience that builds incredible loyalty to its customers. Kim, thank you so much for taking time today to speak with me on the podcast. Really appreciate

Kim Lefko (37:38)
Thank you. Thanks for putting a spotlight on AS. We appreciate it.

PVSB (37:42)
by all means. Sri, you missed a great episode today. I'm sorry you couldn't join us. To our audience, thank you again for choosing us and we look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of Wait For It, the CPG Guys podcast.