True Value

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True Value Company is one of the world’s largest retailer-owned hardware cooperatives with approximately 5,800 independent retail locations worldwide. It is focused on serving its retailers by providing them with the right products, knowledge and expertise they need to successfully serve their customers and grow profitably. True Value Company continues to excel by putting retail growth at the center of everything it does.

The co-op has grown considerably over the years and today supports its retailers through 7 regional distribution centers and 3,000 associates. The corporate headquarters are in Chicago, IL.

1 History
2 Home & Garden Showplace
3 Green Thumb
4 External links

[edit] History

Cotter & Company was established in 1948 by John Cotter. The co-op originated with 25 members and operated under the True Value identity. For individual hardware owners in the 1950s and 1960s, Cotter & Company provided an opportunity to replace the middle man, the small hardware supply company, with a much larger owner-owned organization capable of negotiating better prices for the individual stores, the establishment of a distribution system, and provided an opportunity for individual owners to share in some of the profits from these activities. Importantly, it is reasonable to believe that this organization and others like it in the hardware industry made it possible for the individual hardware store to survive the onslaught of the large home centers located in malls and strip shopping centers that typified the 1980s and 1990s that decimated small community businesses. Subsequent competitive pressures and less than stellar management in the 1990s[1] led to a rethinking of this concept and consolidation of the "hardware cooperative" organizations. During this tumultuous period of the late 1990s, a number of hardware sources abandoned the "True Value" name and joined competing organizations or in some cases closed. Changes in management[2], integration of the consolidated companies, and to some extent a refocusing on the individual hardware owner has returned this company to some semblance of its original health and profitability.

ServiStar Hardware (formerly American Hardware Supply) had previously purchased and merged with Coast to Coast Hardware and had renamed itself to Servistar Coast to Coast Hardware. Their hardware stores were operating under either ServiStar or Coast to Coast retail identities.

In 1997 they merged with Cotter & Company to form the TruServ corporation. Each company and all their stores had different operating and ordering systems as well as overlapping distribution networks. Merging the systems of the three companies proved to be a difficult and costly undertaking, but ultimately it was accomplished.

Most ServiStar and Coast to Coast stores changed to the True Value identity. In 2006 the name was changed to the True Value Company to better reflect the major retail identity of the corporation.

Cotter & Company provides an excellent example of the competitive pressures that have buffeted the retailing industry over the past 50 years. Within this microcosm most of the major trends that have shaped the American retailing industry can be identified: small businesses forced to compete with large corporate structures; attempts by small businesses to obtain price breaks and competitive advantage by organizing into cooperative groups; the titanic battle of the "malls" against "main street"; and relentless pressure to improve efficency, productivity with a resultant lowering of profit margins. In the end the American consumer has been the winner and loser, benefiting from lower prices and increased availability of goods, but losing the sage advice of the hardware man or woman, who provides a veritable encyclopedia of information on a broad spectrum of home-related building and repair issues.

[edit] Home & Garden Showplace

Home & Garden Showplace is the garden center store identity of the True Value Company. It was started by ServiStar to help build their lawn and garden sales. Today there are over 260 Home & Garden Showplace stores across the United States. Each store is independently owned. They purchase merchandise through the True Value distribution centers and buy from many quality growers of plants through various True Value buying programs.

[edit] Green Thumb

Green Thumb garden products are made by many different manufacturers worldwide. They are manufacturered to the specifications of True Value and are sold exclusively in True Value and Home & Garden Showplace stores.