Page 9 - BusinessWest February 21, 2022

The Ace Hardware co-op offers Rocky’s the buying power of a national chain, national advertising, and other advantages while still maintaining its identity.
als, and a lot of stores got smaller. In the ’90s, when Home Depot came in, we got out of new construction and focused more on maintenance and repair.”
Yet, the footprint kept growing. In the late
“
materials, and a lot of stores got smaller. In the ’90s, when Home Depot came in, we got out of new construction and focused more on maintenance and repair.”
’90s, Rocky’s acquired eight stores from a chain in Eastern Mass. that was experiencing financial problems, doubling the size of the operation. Today, with 38 stores in Massachusetts, Connecti- cut, Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, Rocky’s is the largest family-owned Ace retailer.
Working on Additions
While the pandemic may have tested Rocky’s, it convinced others, mainly single-store opera- tors, to leave the game, and Rocky’s has picked a few of those stores up.
The two most recent additions are Karp’s
Rocky’s
Continued on page 82
from store manager to director to vice president of store operations, eventually took over as presi- dent and CEO in 1992, during the rise of Home Depot — a painful time for Rocky’s and all other small hardware chains, which coincided with a long recession that impacted home buying and remodeling.
When the Falcone family was honored by BusinessWest as its Top Entrepreneur for 2006, Jim told the magazine that these larger, national chains, rather than chasing Rocky’s from the scene, provided a much-needed wake-up call,
one that would ultimately make the company more efficient, competitive, and service-oriented.
“When I became president in ’92, I said, ‘hey, wait a second,’” Rocco said, and seriously recon- sidered the company’s place in the industry
— specifically, where they could compete most effectively on price, and where they couldn’t. So they got rid of the kitchen-cabinet business, as well as doors, windows, insulation, sheetrock, and other staples of large-scale projects.
“No one wanted to come buy sheetrock from us,” he said. “We got out of the building materi-
We got out of the building
Michael Lynch
Barbara-Jean Michael James Michael Henry "Hank" Joe Doug
Deloria Moriarty Montemayor Davey Downey Kulig
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