Page 32 - DoitBest 2021 Report

with the team at nearby Bremen Hardware, and when mainly serve commercial customers — a market they
the owners were ready to sell, the Jones family was weren’t as familiar with. Winford and Nate again relied
their first choice. on resources from Do it Best to guide their decisions
for the two new acquisitions.
While planning their financing strategy for the new
location, Winford and Nate’s Do it Best membership
played a key role, and ultimately made acquisition an
easy decision.

“We were able to leverage our preference shares —
our ownership equity in the co-op — which greatly
helped in keeping our debt load down,” Nate said.

To better appeal to their customers
Their acquisition experience went so well that
they were eager to add a third location when the
opportunity arose in 2019 to buy Cottin’s Hardware in from a data-driven perspective,
Sturgis, Michigan.
the Joneses implemented the

Best Rewards customer loyalty
In addition to the financial guidance and support SM
they received, Winford and Nate also engaged retail
expertise and resources from Do it Best to customize program at all three locations
their new locations. The Do it Best team helped to to provide access to customer
completely gut their Bremen store and redesign it
purchase data and insights into
with all-new fixtures and planograms, optimized for
their inventory and customer mix.
buying behaviors.

While their original store in Shipshewana has always
focused on regional tourism, their other locations

32 | 2021 REP OR T