Font Resize
True Value's research clearly showed that its customers were staying home more these days, spending that extra time doing house and yard projects they often hired out before the recession kicked in.
So this week at the Salt Palace Convention Center, the fall convention of the hardware store cooperative called attention to the variety of products, at a variety of prices, that True Value will have available to this new breed of cost-conscious do-it-yourselfers.
"We're seeing more and more people taking on these [household] tasks, particularly in lawn and gardening and painting," said Lyle Heidemann, chief executive of True Value, which has 3,825 hardware stores in 50 states and as many countries.
"The customer is increasingly interested in value," he added. "They may be trading down to save money. They may still buy one of something. But where they might have bought a brand name before, they're down to a [generic] brand to save money."
Examples filled the aisles of the Salt Palace exhibit hall where 2,000 retailers and 1,000 product suppliers are making sales deals this week.
Take grills, for instance.
Charcoal is in. As they have since the 1950s, True Value stores will have plenty of high-caliber Weber products that use charcoal or gas. But for people who might be looking for a cheaper price tag, the stores also will have a full line of less expensive, but still stainless-steel, cookers.
Ever-improving technology
David Groene, of Baltimore-based DAP, showed two types of caulk: an outdoor variety that can be used even in a rainstorm and an indoor version "you can apply at dinner time and take a shower before you go to bed."
A hose that doesn't kink, or become too rigid in cold weather, resulted from research Teknor Apex Co. has done in developing lawn-and-garden products for Green Thumb, True Value's in-house brand.
That same brand also will be fixed to polymer-coated grass seeds that True Value employee Todd Stanojev pledged "will grow in a concrete block ... anyone can grow it."
Batteries are getting lighter and lasting longer, evidenced by the units DeWalt has created for its broad line of power tools; propane canisters are coming into greater use running products such as weed wackers and leaf blowers.
"With the whole country going green, we've found customers gravitate to products like this," said True Value seasonal-product manager Mark Mlyniec, citing the lack of emissions from a gasoline-powered motor.
The greenest of the green products being promoted to True Value retailers was a 6-foot-diameter turbine that Brian Levine, of producing company EarthTronics, said could account for more than 25 percent of household energy needs.
While it has a $6,000 price tag, Levine said, 60-70 percent of the cost can be recouped with federal and state rebates. Consumers can save even more money if that turbine sends electricity to advanced lines of compact fluorescent lights, the long thin tubes now wound tightly into a coil, that are "75 percent more efficient than an incandescent light," said Levine's colleague, Kevin Youngquist.
Exposing retailers to all of these products is True Value's way of helping them "keep up on trends of what's going on green," said senior vice president Michael Clark.
And of what sells in a price-conscious time.
