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Industry & Trends

True Value Being Acquired by Do It Best

It’s yet another change in the home improvement and repair retail sector that will impact building materials suppliers.

The upheaval in the retailing business continues with the news that True Value Co., the brand for more than 4,500 independently owned and managed outlets, had agreed to sell itself to a major competitor Do It Best Corp.

This deal is rather complicated, involving True Value declaring bankruptcy and going through Chapter 11 proceedings before its acquisition. The True Value stores themselves are not part of the bankruptcy filing and all are expected to continue business as usual while Do It Best proceeds with the deal. As the “stalking horse” bidder– which means they are taking the lead in this bidding process – Do It Best could still be outbid but at press time there were no reports of other interested parties getting involved.

“After a thorough evaluation of strategic alternatives, we determined that the sale of our business was the path forward to maximize value and best serve our retail partners and other stakeholders into the future,” Chris Kempa, True Value’s CEO, said in a statement at the time of the announcement. “We believe that entering the process with an agreed offer from Do it Best, who has a similar decades-long history in the home improvement space and also operates with a focus on supporting members and helping them grow, is the most beneficial next step for True Value and our associates, customers and vendor partners.”

Do It Best is significantly smaller than True Value with only about 450 locations, but it too does not own the individual stores, operating as a member cooperative. In an interview with HBS Dealer magazine, the company’s CEO Dan Starr (pictured at the top of the article) said he looked forward to combining the two brands. “If our bid is successful, we’d certainly be buying the inventory that they have, and the customer relationships. Also, there’s the stable of brand names and trade names — EasyCare paint and Master Mechanic tools are examples.

“So, those are the critical assets, and we are also interested in their distribution centers,” he said. “We’re already engaged in trying to optimize our own distribution network. So there’s a lot of additional work that has to take place before we figure it out. But I do think we’re going to need their distribution centers.”

As for how the two brands would operate side-by-side, Starr said, “I think that we plan to continue to operate True Value as it has historically operated, serving a customer group. Then we have to map out a path where we bring all those ends together. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to run two different companies.

“But we are a co-op, and I think that our go-to-market strategy would be for a lot of those retailers to join the co-op. That doesn’t mean that they would stop using the True Value name. We would have a well-designed retail plan for folks who want to draw on that, and a path for folks to opt into that after the close.”

The bankruptcy proceedings were still in process and there was no timetable as to when it would be completed. In the meantime, True Value is saying vendors are being paid as usual. True Value’s Chapter 11 filing follows the bankruptcy of another important retailer in the building products sector, LL Flooring, which is in the process of being bought back by its founder to operate as a chain with half of the 400 stores it once had.

Image: Do It Best Press Release

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