Throwback Thursday is a regular feature in which we dip into the archives of the Hardlines Weekly Report.
Twenty-five years ago, the PRO banner was one of the major hardware retail brands in Canada. And its hardware supplier, Sodisco-Howden Group, hoped it was giving the brand a new lease on life when it announced, in our Feb. 14, 2000, issue, that only PRO would remain after the group stopped supporting its other four banners with merchandising programs.
The resulting 750 PRO stores, we reported, “will be the largest group of independently-owned hardware stores in Canada,” said Tony Molluso, then-president of Sodisco. It seems that Molluso considered the larger Home Hardware, a co-op, to be distinct from an independent dealer. The beginning of the end for PRO came with Canwel’s purchase of Sodisco-Howden in 2014.
