Looking ahead to Ace highlights

What do Sheryl Crow and the guy who sings the national anthem at Blackhawk home games have in common? They’ll both perform at the Ace Hardware 2015 Fall Convention & Exhibits, coming to Chicago Aug. 20-22.

Also performing will be John Surane, executive VP merchandising, marketing and sales for the Oak Brook, Ill.-based co-op. He’ll help lead the Thursday morning General session. He spoke to HBSDealer about highlights and hot spots coming up on the show floor, and around town. Here’s the edited version of the interview:

HBSDealer: What are the highlights on the agenda?

Surane: The show floor is going to be awesome, as always. Countless new programs, new vendors, new arrivals. As for the “cool” factor: we’re going to have a concert with Cheryl Crow out at the end of Navy Pier followed by an Ace fireworks show. I think the retailers are going to love it. That’s the fun part.

HBSDealer: At your last show, Condi Rice was a big draw as a keynote speaker. Who gets to follow her act?

Surane: Retailers loved that segment. [Ace VP] Kane Calamari, who interviewed her, did such an excellent job. They had a nice chemistry. And we still hear positive things about her speech.

This time, we’re going to do a couple things differently. We’re going to shorten the general session a little bit, because we know that retailers like to be on the show floor. It will be [CEO] John Venhuizen and [chairman] Jim Ackroyd and myself. But we sprinkled in some really cool video content that is going to spur on a lot of pride and energy in the group.

HBSDealer: What are the highlights on the show floor?

Surane: The big thing for us will be lawn and garden. For instance, we have a whole new outdoor power assortment that features Toro. Last year, we secured a warehouse program with Toro, and that was a big deal. In 2016, it will be a bigger, badder program.

Grilling continues to kick butt for us. We’ve got all the best brands. We’re going to be up huge with Weber this year. And Green Egg will also be at our show, and that’s something they’ve never done before.

Also in lawn and garden, Yeti coolers have just blown up. Sales are up about 145% this year, and that’s over a big number. We’re selling coolers for $500.

Beyond lawn and garden, LED bulbs will be big, specifically, LED for business. A very small percentage of our retail stores has been retrofitted wihth LED bulbs,

HBSDealer: What about paint and your major initiative with the Paint Studio?

Surane: It’s been great. Believe it or not, we’re only a year and a half into it. We had our official launch of the Paint Studio last May, and as we sit here we have almost 3, 500 stores with the full Paint Studio footprint. Our business is up again double digits this year. The sundries business is up about the same. And it’s proven to be what we thought it would be -- a driver for the overall business of the hardware stores.

HBSDealer: What advice do you have to attendees?

Surane: Rest up really well. Because once we plug you in on that Thursday morning in the general session, it’s going to be a wild ride for three days.