Voices on a new direction
DENVER — Some 4,000 people filed into the Bellco Theatre in Denver to hear the latest on True Value’s much-anticipated unveiling of its strategic plan.
As we settled into our seats, a stringed instrument quartet pounded out the heart-throbbing chords of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. About two hours later, president and CEO John Hartmann was driving across the stage on a dirt bike. An uninvited fire alarm interfered with his closing remarks, but the point was made: engagement, growth, efficiency — three pillars of a new True Value.
Of course, any strategic plan will be judged ultimately by its results alone. But general sessions are judged by the retailers in attendance.
So we asked them.
Jim Ivy from Wallace True Value in Fort Stockton, Texas, feels like the co-op is heading in a new direction.
“I like the new blood,” he said. “One of the things that everybody has complained about forever is the national advertising. Here for the first time in a long time I heard people applauding about it. So we’ll see how it works.”
True Value’s advertising plan — which will see 10 times the spend of 2014 at no extra cost to retailers — was widely applauded, during and after the general session.
Ryan Clavier of Hatt’s Industrial Supplies in Thorndale, Pennsylvania, liked the plan for national branding and the aggressive path that Hartmann seems to be charting. “When we started back in 1996, we were the No. 1 co-op,” Clavier said. “We don’t want to be No. 3 anymore. We want to be No. 1.”
Brenda Bowling of Jackson True Value Hardware, of Jackson, Kentucky, said this year’s general session was the best she’s been to (out of 20). Don Urban, of KC True Value in Carrizo Springs, Texas, said the information was great, but the session went on too long.
Gregg Heyer of Palm Springs (California) Hardware says he’s encouraged by what he heard at the General Session. “I like the way that stores that want to remodel are going to be able to pick and choose what fixtures and what things will work for them. When we remodeled, we were kind of stuck with what they told us we were going to have.”
For Debbie Tillman, of Penn Lake (Minnesota) True Value, the process matters. “I appreciated the fact that there was a strategic plan. If you don’t have that, then you don’t have an outlook for the future.”
Jeff Gutierrez of Placerville (California) True Value liked what he heard.
“John [Hartmann] has a lot of fire in his belly, and it’s good to see that,” he said. “It was obviously a different direction than True Value has gone in the past. In our business, we always have to implement new ideas. We’ve always done that at True Value, but never at the speed that John wants to do it.”
Gutierrez added: “Now we’re in this kind of wait-and-see mode to see if everything is fulfilled.”
[email protected]