Habitrail Update

During the weekly contractors' meeting today, our general contractor ensured us that the HVAC Habitrail installation is moving at a good pace. Just seems slow to us novices. Yesterday the demo crew removed a ramp, today they are building stairs. Also the area for the new ramp to the outside Patio Living department is prepped and should be built today or tomorrow. No drywall work today - they have to wait for the Screw Inspection before they can tape. Screw Inspection? Are you kidding me?

We received an updated construction project schedule today and pending the lights that we took forever to decide on arriving on a timely basis, we are only 1 day behind schedule. January 30 is the current projected completion date for construction. Fortunately we have 2 weeks of overrun time as the store fixtures won't deliver until February 16.

Demo Day!

Lots of demolition work today. The ramp that was located at the back door has now been removed. It will be replaced by stairs so that we will have more floor space in our Service Room. At the outdoor patio area, the rest of the wall was removed to allow for installation of the new glass door and glass sidelight. The HVAC contractor is hanging duct work (they sure seem slow to me - it's basically like snapping together a Habitrail - what's taking so long????) The drywall contractor finished installing the second side of the dry wall (they worked on Friday after Christmas) and should start taping tomorrow. Electrical contractor keeps plodding along - we are seeing wires hanging out of conduit now.

Merry Christmas!

Just a few shots from Christmas Eve progress. Insulation installed in the walls and paint samples applied for our review. HVAC guys are putting up duct work - we'll have photos of that next week.

Another Productive Tuesday

You'll probably find this hard to believe -- we finally chose a light fixture for the low ceiling area. It's not exactly the style we had hoped for, but budgets dictated we lower our expectations. The fixture we chose reminds me of elementary school. Oh well. The woman from Cooper Lighting assures me she is using this same light fixture in an upscale hardware store in New England.

Drywall is up on one side of all the new walls and as soon as we receive sign-off on our first round of inspections, the balance of the drywall will be completed.

Duct work for the HVAC system was delivered today and should start going up soon. Our electrical contractor continues to plod along with conduit and receptacle box installations. By the way, we love our electrical contractor (Qualtec Electric) if anyone ever needs a referral.

Here are larger samples of two of the paint colors we have selected. Tomorrow the contractor will paint large patches for us to review in the actual store setting. We also selected the colors (French Gray and Almond) for the concrete pavers that will be used in the outdoor Patio Living Department.

The Manager of Retail Loss Prevention from Ace Hardware corporate HQ visited the store today. She is going to help us plot out the security camera system that we'll use to catch our employees stealing from us. Did you know that over half of retail loss is from employee theft???

Pam keeps working away on the merchandise selection. The actual orders for our Opening Stock Order (OSO in hardware lingo) are now being created by our Ace Project Manager. Pam is reviewing the orders as he completes them and regularly reports on how much money we're spending. "Now it's $40,000". Then an hour later, "Now it's $70,000" and so on.

Thanks for checking our progress - we hope you have a great holiday week.

Visible Progress

Stuff is happening! The plumbers have finished installing lines for the bathrooms, drinking fountain and utility sink. The electrical contractor has everything in place for the new service boxes (see picture below) and they have installed lots of conduit and wiring for receptacles and lights. Still no decision on light fixtures though :-(




Demolition work has been done for the new glass door to the "Patio Living Dept". Here's a shot from outside on the patio.



And here it is from the inside. You can also see where they created the small alcove to the right of the door for the utility sink.

All of the HVAC units are now hung on the ceiling and they have started placing the duct mounts. Sheetrock was delivered today and hopefully they'll start with drywall on Monday. We selected an exterior sign contractor today - now we start the design approval process with the city, Ace Hardware and our landlord.

Making Decisions...Sort of

Yesterday Pam and I drove to Taft, CA (near Bakersfield) to visit our friend and former employee Eric Cooper. Eric's family owns the True Value hardware store in Taft and he was the first person we called when we decided to jump into the hardware business. After he said "go for it", we knew there was no looking back. Eric helped his father move from a 5500 sq ft store to a 20,000 sq ft store and now runs a very successful home center and adjacent upscale nursery. We went up there for advice from he and his brother Jeff. Came home with a whole notebook of ideas. Thanks Eric!

This morning Sissi Engle, a close friend of Pam & Sunny's who works for Home Depot (sshhh!) came down to the store to help us pick out paint colors for our walls. Until recent changes in Depot's strategies, Sissi was an in-home decorating consultant. In other words, she helped idiots make sure their house didn't get painted pink, turquoise and chartreuse. Now she helps other idiots remodel their kitchens, but you have to go into the store for that. Here's Pam holding up the final selection from the color samples. These are in-line with Ace's new progressive contemporary colors for stores. No more white or white for choices from HQ. Sorry about the blurry close-up.

Still no decision on light fixtures, but we did select the store fixture manufacturer - Madix. So there is one item checked off the list and another $50,000 check written. We plan to begin the fixture installation on February 16. That's our first hard date - hopefully we'll make it. Pam's still shopping - today was small appliances, kitchen drawer organizers, pendant lights, fans and heaters. When will it end?

The HVAC contractor laid out the duct system (chalked on the ground) and we reviewed / approved that today. The first HVAC unit was delivered today and within a few days we should have ducts in the ceiling.

Plumbing for the bathrooms is installed and electricians will start working on wiring receptacles this week. We decided to go with the Talkswitch phone system (thanks for the tip Scott G - want to sell us your old system?)

Still working on exterior signs and now interviewing contractors to do network / phone cabling. Soon will be surveillance cameras and music systems.

Walls Go Up

Two days of concrete cutting doesn't really give us much to show, but today the walls were framed - now that looks like progress. The first picture is the new demising wall between us and the small space that will be left for a restaurant (because more of those are needed downtown???) The second picture is the storage room and the last is the office, break room and bathrooms.







Next week electricians and plumbers will start running stuff through the walls. Also, next week the HVAC contractor will start to layout ducts and stuff.

For those who are wondering...still no decision on the lights for the low ceiling area. We learned today that we can buy direct from Cooper Lighting due to a deal with Ace Hardware so that changes everything. More on that next week I am sure.

Pam is learning all about VOIP (Voice Over Internet) for our phone system. I guess things HAVE changed since we last bought a system.

Today we established the date to begin setting store fixtures and merchandise - February 16. Of course that is subject to change should anything hold up construction, like a lack of decision on light fixtures.

Most stores use their new employees to build fixtures and place all of the merchandise. That process takes about 5 - 6 weeks using employees. We decided to spend $47,000 to use a professional service and get it done in 2 weeks instead. Only time will tell if we are really stupid or blazing new trails. (Actually, we're not the first - the new Crown Ace Hardware in Liberty Station did it with pros too.)

Thanks for checking in with us.

Shopping, Shopping & More Shopping!

Product categories, merchandise mix, plan-o-grams (POGs), discovery sets, OSO (opening stock order), G/B/B (good/better/best), competitive and non-competitive pricing, blind, drop-ship, and...... It all comes down to shopping! Shopping for us and shopping for you (our future customers).

We spent several weeks working on the merchandising layout. Just when we think it's final, the Ace Project Manager calls me today with some new "great" ideas of how we could move this here and this there. Normally the Project Manager would just make this decision on his own, but he very quickly learned that Harry and I don't work that way. Suprising to hear that Harry and I are not the typical new Ace owner conformists isn't it? Our Project Manager has come a long way in a short few months to understand and learn that we aren't the typical new owner and it's a lot easier to just do things the way we want, even though he has over 20 years of experience doing this with Ace and we've been working on it for 18 months. Why would he question us?

Normally the process is that the Project Manager sets up your OSO (see acronym explanation above) based on the size of your store and the merchandising layout. But tell me - what does a guy living in AZ or merchandise experts in Chicago know about selling in an Urban setting like Downtown San Diego? In our opinion, not enough. So we have embarked on what now seems to be an on-going project of choosing product for our OSO. Ace has standard POGs (see acronym explanation above) for every 4' section of the store. But do we really want to be carrying skunk traps, lawn mowers, 15 different kinds of shovels, etc. We need to pick and choose some of the products and we want to carry upgrades of small appliances, lights, bathroom and kitchen accessories, plant containers. Most importantly - I really don't want more than one Crockpot!

To do all this I spend most of my day reviewing POGs on the Ace website, looking at product lists, and watching price points. I never thought I would say that I'm a little tired of shopping. It will all be worth it because we will have a product mix that works great for Downtown and won't have a bunch of product that comes with the standard OSO that we have to end up giving to Big Lots or a $1 store for them to get rid of. Our Project Manager was a little grey when he met me; now I think he may be bald.

By the way - I wish I could tell you how much that hammer cost us that you are going to buy. I'm going to love the hardware business!

Danger Zone!

Tuesday's are Construction Progress meeting day. Since yesterday was the start day, there wasn't much progress to talk about today. So, what did we talk about? LIGHTS of course! We're half way there - we selected a light for the high ceiling area. That was easy since no one sees them anyway - we just wanted cheap and effective. Mostly cheap. Still no decision on light fixtures for the low ceiling area. Maybe tomorrow.

The floor was being x-rayed today to make sure there are no pipes or conduit in the places we need to core the floor for our own plumbing and electrical. Once that is completed the plumbing and electrical contractors will start laying out the paths for water and power. Once the paths are established, wall framing starts.

Thanks to Scott G and Eric C for calling with recommendations for phone systems after reading yesterday's post.

Just Meetings.

Today we met (again!) with the electrical contractor, electrical engineer, architect and general contractor to try to resolve our lighting. T5, T8, T12 - what the heck is that all about? Aren't they just flourescent bulbs? And yes, we hate that look. How many foot candles do we want? Well, Ace recommends 130, but Title 24 says it has to be around 100. Huh? Just light the place up and don't use any of those ugly two tube garage lights. Oh, and cut the budget...a lot!

We also met with one of the fixture companies trying to "win" the business. There are only two fixture companies (Lozier and Madix) that Ace will let us consider. Frankly, how can there not be price fixing between them?

Started looking at phone systems today. It's surprising how little has changed in that world in the last 10 years, other then the prices. Met with John Mills of Mills Communications. For those who remember him from our Epic days - he's exactly the same - just richer. (Remember, prices are the only thing that has changed.)

Wrote our first big equipment purchase check - $40,000 for the POS System. That's just a fancy name for cash registers. You can get cash registers for a couple thou or if you want POS - buck up!

The "Journey" Begins

Monday, December 8 will start a four month journey for Sterling Hardware Group as construction begins on Downtown Ace Hardware. We've created this blog so that you can follow along with the activity from construction to fixture installation, merchandising to staff training, soft-opening to the big party -- THE GRAND OPENING.

We'll put up photos of the progress and comment on our experiences. You can share our joy, laugh at our silliness, feel our stress and be a part of this great adventure. Let the hammering begin!