A dream realized: Hendershot opens Lovell Ace Hardware

Michael Hendershot always wanted a key to a hardware store. The owner and operator of BBM Construction, he’d be working after hours at his cabinet shop and needed something. He had to wait until morning.

And as the new owner of Ace Hardware in Lovell, purchasing the CK Hardware building from Cheryl Knop, he can enter the hardware store whenever he wants.

“I’ve always wanted a key to a hardware store, and this is probably the most expensive way to get one,” he said with a smile. “But it’s always been a dream of mine, and that’s come from years and years of doing projects on nights and weekends and not having access to the product and supplies that I needed. So I’d be working on something at 9 o’clock at night, like remodeling the house on Fifth Street that we lived in, and I was like ‘Crap, I need this fastener, I need that board’ or whatever. And I’m like, ‘I just wish I had a key to a hardware store.’ I’ve always wanted it, so it’s something that I’ve just dreamed about.”

Hendershot has been working in construction and building businesses for many years. A 2000 graduate of Lovell School, he served a two-year church mission in South Africa and upon his return married Nicole Kinser of Washington State, who he’d gotten to know over the years when she visited relatives in Lovell and Cowley. The couple wed in June of 2003.

Nicole was attending Westminster University in Salt Lake to pursue an education degree, so the couple lived in Salt Lake while she finished her degree. Returning to Lovell, Michael attended one semester at Northwest College, then moved into the building trades. School wasn’t for him. In fact, he worked in masonry restoration while living in Utah.

After the couple returned to Lovell, Nicole taught elementary school in Burlington and later Lovell, and Michael worked for Curtis Abraham and Steve McArthur in construction, then was hired by Jacob Hatch at Woodcraft Cabinets in 2007 after Hatch bought the company from Dean Tippetts. Hendershot noted that he loved woodworking and practically lived in the wood shop classroom during high school. He quickly rose to become shop foreman at Woodcraft.

Over the years, working for Woodcraft, Hendershot found himself working out of town a lot on projects, but with a young family at home, he didn’t want to travel as much, so in 2014 he struck out on his own, starting BBM Construction, operating from the old gas and electric building next to the Rocky Mountain Power substation on Nevada, then a building behind Lovell Drug.

Initially, BBM did general construction, and Hendershot didn’t want to compete with Woodcraft, but Woodcraft had so much work that they were turning down business, he said, so prospective customers approached Hendershot. He gradually assumed the cabinet market, and Woodcraft closed. Hendershot and Hatch have remained friends, and BBM is a primary supplier of cabinets for Hatch’s construction company in Cody, Diamond Point Construction. BBM now operates out of the former Woodcraft and later Gary’s Auto Body shop on Pennsylvania.

The Ace Hardware move

Hendershot said he had talked to CK Hardware owner Knop off and on in recent years, but nothing ever came of it. Then his good friend Peter Sanders, who works for Benjamin Moore Paints and supplies paints for Ace Hardware stores in the region, told him Ace was interested in coming to Lovell and was looking for an investor.

“Do you know anybody who’s interested?” Sanders asked.

“I am,” was Hendershot’s quick reply. “I’m definitely interested.”

Hendershot worked with some regional Ace representatives in January, who then approached Knop to ask if she was interested in selling the store. She was. And Hendershot soon revealed himself as the investor in February.

Hendershot negotiated a price with Knop for her building and inventory and over the next several weeks and months worked with Ace to get approved for credit, train on company procedures and put together a plan. He noted that Ace Hardware is a cooperative rather than a franchise.

He then had to find a general manager for the store and approached Ryan Felkins of the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, who was ready for a change and accepted the role as manager. He also hired Holly Wardell of Burlington as assistant manager. Daughter Whitney Hendershot has been helping during the transition, as well, before returning to college, along with other family members.

It took weeks to get everything going as the project worked through some setbacks, but Hendershot finally got the keys to the building – his coveted keys to the hardware store – on Monday, Aug. 24, though Knop let he and friend Ben Snyder in on Sunday the 23rd to install wiring for a computerized point of sale system.

Knop had owned CK Hardware for 36 years, Hendershot said, and her father, Bud Mills, ran Coast to Coast in Lovell before that.

The new crew worked to set up the new store on August 24-25 and opened for business on Wednesday, Aug. 26.

Next steps

The new Lovell Ace Hardware store is fully up and running, with Hendershot and crew gradually selling Knop’s extensive inventory and replacing it with Ace products. Over time, it will be a completely new store, Hendershot said, with Ace assisting with the store design through a company fixture plan and merchandising plan, then coming to the store for a full conversion.

“It’s going to be a completely new store, and it will take probably a couple months to get the plan finalized, and then another month to make that full conversion,” Hendershot said. “And if you’ve ever been into another Ace store like in Powell or Greybull, it’s going to look very similar, just on a smaller scale.

There are three sizes of Ace stores, Hendershot said: convenience, core and super store.

Initially, the store will be an Ace convenience level store, which he said has “all of the essentials.” Ace will advise, though not require, merchandise to sell based on demographics.

Other than sprucing up the store, customers won’t notice much change at first, and Hendershot wants to maintain Knop’s impressive inventory, noting that he has heard many people say, essentially, “I always come here because I know if she doesn’t have it, it’s not in Lovell.”

“And so we’re going to try and keep that mentality here,” he said.

Customer service

One thing shoppers will notice is Ace Hardware’s customer service, with the company truly stressing the longtime motto “Ace is the place with the helpful hardware folks (formerly hardware man),” Hendershot said.

He said the Ace model is to WOW the customer, to ask “What can I do to help you (the first W),” to “Offer everything” a customer needs and then offer a “Warm thank you.”

“We want to wow our customers and make them feel welcome, and obviously the Ace model is we’re the helpful place, right? And so that’s something that going back to Cheryl again, she was always helpful. She knew everything, where it was, what it was for,” Hendershot said. “So we’re going try and keep that, for sure. But the things they’ll notice are going to be small at first, until that we’re calling it Aceification, and that’s when it’s going to be like ‘holy smokes, this place looks completely different.’”

Planned expansion

Hendershot confirmed that he has a deal in place with Scott Murphey to purchase the former Murphey Ford building adjacent to the hardware store, which will increase the square footage of the store from some 5,500 square feet to around 12,000 square feet, at which point the store would become an Ace Super Store and allow the store to offer much more in the way of lawn and garden products.

The new owner plans to work with local stores and companies to offer their products like Gary Emmett’s Successful Gardens offerings or Cindy Asay’s Wild Edge products. Perhaps Queen Bee honey candy and products.

“The Ace model has us putting 20 percent of our own product in the store, whether that’s locally or third-party vendor procured,” he said.

It will take months to clean and remodel the Murphey building, but Hendershot loves the historic look of the building, as do his Ace representatives, one of which told him, “This is one of the coolest locations I’ve seen in a long time with that store.” Added Hendershot, “My marketing guy said he was on the phone with the CEO of Ace, who I met last week, and he said this is one of the most exciting stores that he’s (known about).”

Much excitement

Hendershot said he couldn’t be more excited about the new store and how Ace operates.

“We want to make it to where it’s a friendly place for everybody, not just a home repair person,” he said. “The part that I’m most excited about is that Ace Hardware is a company that cares, and I saw that from the moment that I met the marketing development guy. He gave me his cell phone right away, said, ‘Call me anytime you have a question.’ All the way to the guy under the CEO. He did not give us his cell phone number, but everyone else did. They said, ‘Call me anytime.’

“That says a lot about a company. They care, and they know everyone. It’s unreal how much they care. Not only that, the model is set up to where they help people, and that’s something that I’ve always been very passionate about -- helping people, not just helping them find hardware, but helping them in times of need.”

Ace gives to many charitable causes and will do so on the local level, as well, helping causes and supporting local teams. Hendershot said the Lovell store is already working with the Ace Roundup program, where customers can round the cost of a purchase up to the next dollar, with the proceeds going to the Lovell Library.

The company is very supportive of employees in need of help, as well, he said.

Lovell Ace Hardware is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Hendershot said he got his first taste of the store when he was a kid and with his brother Eric bought two banana seat bicycles.

“That’s my first memory of Ace, I guess, and I’ve been in here a lot of times since,” he said.

And now he has the keys.