The company planned to quadruple its international sales to $400 million by 2000, with a special focus on South America. NHS also became the supplier in 1998 to the largest non-cooperative buying group for lumber and building materials in the United States. The company slowly expanded over the next few decades until Westlake joined the Ace Hardware distribution network in 1959 and eventually became the largest Ace dealer in America. By January 1951 the company’s sales had reached $9 million. When Jeremy Melnick’s grandfather opened his first Ace Hardware store along Chicago’s ritzy Gold Coast in 1950, there wasn’t a whole lot of competition.

YP – The Real Yellow PagesSM – helps you find the right local businesses to meet your specific needs. Search results are sorted by a combination of factors to give you a set of choices in response to your search criteria. “Preferred” listings, or those with featured website buttons, indicate YP advertisers who directly provide information about their businesses to help consumers make more informed buying decisions. YP advertisers receive higher placement in the default ordering of search results and may appear in sponsored listings on the top, side, or bottom of the search results page. I wish kids today could have experienced those old hardware stores.

I owned and operated a Coast to Coast Hardware franchise in Clemmons, North Carolina from 1980 until we sold the store in 1996. Our store was their first on the east coast and in fact, made them truly coast to coast. Following our store, several opened on the east coast including in Rocky Mount, VA; Jonesville, NC; Fort Mill, SC and Winston-Salem, NC to name a few. Many of the small eastern Montana towns in our area had Coast to Coast stores. Our local small hometown, where we lived during the school year after our country school closed, eventually got one, too. I wish I could remember the brand name of the new bicycle I got it for my birthday as a kid in about 1963.

Since it’s relocation in 2017 to 73 Basset St, Mitre 10 Mona Vale has gone from strength to strength, encompassing the Design Centre, Garden Centre, STIHL agency and Trade Centre all under one roof. The Three Arts Club, which houses RH’s new Chicago store, was built in 1914 as a residence for women studying music, drama, and the visual arts. Three arches at the entrance are supported by fluted columns with Byzantine capitals that feature emblems of the arts.

This award sees brands like Home Timber and Hardware and other Mitre 10 stores vying for the honour to be acknowledged as ‘best of the best’. The dinner was part of IHG’s Expo at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre which saw over 600 members, 220 suppliers and over 2000 attendees come together for all things trade and hardware. Gold Coast hardware stores may well be on its way in the Windy City, but now Chicagoans have a new shopping destination where they can while away the frigid days to come. Last week RH opened the doors of a gigantic flagship in the city’s residential Gold Coast neighborhood. And in true RH fashion, it’s a lot more than just a furniture showroom.