The 27th Hardlines Conference takes place Oct. 17 and 18 at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler on the edge of B.C.’s Garibaldi Provincial Park. This year, it’s being held in tandem with the B.C. Building Supply Industry Association’s 85th anniversary event, and BSIA members get 30 percent off registration for the Hardlines Conference.

The illustrious lineup of Conference speakers includes Home Depot veteran Jim Inglis; Jean-Sébastien Lamoureux, SVP of RONA affiliates, wholesale, and public affairs at RONA inc.; and Geneviève Gagnon, president of Gagnon La Grande Quincaillerie, Evolution Distribution, and Evolution Structures.

Registration closes tomorrow, and our hotel room allotment is almost fully booked. Click here to confirm your place now!

Home Hardware Stores Ltd. has announced that Nathalie Bellerive, dealer-owner of Matériaux Lavergne Home Hardware Building Centres in Charette and Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, Que., has acquired her third store. Matériaux Lavergne Inc. Saint-Paulin celebrated its official opening with a barbecue, giveaway prizes, and special promotions for the community.

Established in 1986, Matériaux Lavergne joined the Home Hardware banner in 2011. The Saint-Paulin location boasts over 4,600 square feet of retail space and an additional 1,700 square feet of warehouse space.

HomeStars, the online contractor referral service, published its fifth annual Reno Report last week. It revealed that Canadian homeowner respondents reported spending an average of $12,300 on renovations in the past 12 months. That was down from about $13,000—or 5.4 percent—in the 2022 Reno Report.

HomeStars also asked homeowners to predict their anticipated renovation spending over the next 12 months. That number, $10,264, is a significant 14.1 percent decline from the past year’s average spend.

“Weather-related events” were a major driver of Canadian renovations, the survey said. One-third of responding homeowners had completed emergency repairs because of weather-related events, peaking in Atlantic Canada at 41 percent.

The Home Depot’s Atlanta head office last week named selected products from vendors as Innovation Award winners.

The overall winner was a range of electrical switches and outlets called Decora Edge, manufactured by Leviton. They “make installing light switches and outlets faster, safer, and more efficient,” Home Depot said in a release. “Colour-coded levers help to easily identify the correct terminal for wiring, and an audible click gives extra confidence with every installation.”

Coincidentally, Leviton’s Decora Edge line was one of 25 notable products for 2024 chosen by the editors of Hardlines Home Improvement Quarterly. That PRODUCTS issue of our trade magazine will mail on Oct. 13.

(HHIQ is subscriber-only, but it’s FREE to home improvement retailers! To subscribe click here.)

Did you know that three retail groups, Home Hardware, RONA, and Canadian Tire, all share about the same level of sales in British Columbia? But one retailer has almost twice as much of the market in that province than these three. Across the country in Nova Scotia, Home Hardware is the market leader, owning almost one-third of the market for retail home improvement sales in that province, with Kent in second place.

These are just some of the valuable facts you’ll find in the latest edition of the Hardlines Market Share Report, which is available now. This report details total sales by store format and individual banner in every province and territory. The store counts and sales volumes, and market shares of every key banner, are listed by province.

The Hardlines Market Share Report features more than 80 slides in handy PowerPoint format, with proprietary information that is available only from Hardlines. (Click here to order yours today!)

Throwback Thursday is a weekly feature in which we dip into the Hardlines Weekly Report archives.

On Sept. 29, 2003, we reported that Budget Canada had opened its first car rental kiosk in a Canadian Tire store, with an opening in Pickering, Ont. “The move is part of a five-year agreement signed back in February 2002 between Canadian Tire and Budget, which will involve the installation of kiosks in up to 100 Canadian Tire stores by the end of next year.”

That never happened, as the experiment evidently proved to be disappointing. The link between the two firms still exists, though, for promotional reasons. Canadian Tire Triangle Rewards program members can get “up to 35 percent off” at Budget and up to 30 percent off at Avis car rental (now a sister company to Budget).

Gino DiGioacchino has been appointed president and CEO of Giant Tiger Stores Ltd. He formerly served on the Giant Tiger board of directors and as interim president and CEO. DiGioacchino replaces Paul Wood, who held the role for slightly more than two years before leaving the company in November 2022.

DiGioacchino is best known to this industry for his time at The Home Depot Canada. As VP of merchandising, he was considered the number two in the company after then-president Annette Verschuren. He left Home Depot Canada in 2011 to become chief merchandising officer at Walmart Canada, a position he held until 2016. He joined the Giant Tiger board in 2017.

At Costco Wholesale Corp., net sales for the fourth quarter were $77.43 billion, an increase of 9.4 percent from $70.76 billion. Net sales for the fiscal year, which includes an extra week, reached $237.71 billion, up 6.7 percent from $222.73 billion. In Canada, where Costco has 107 stores, comp sales were up 8.1 percent. But excluding the increase in gas prices and the impact of foreign currency exchange, the comp increase was a more modest 1.7 percent.

RONA inc. announced it has received a Special Recognition Energy Star Canada Award, the fourth Energy Star distinction conferred on the organization. The award recognizes RONA’s participation in the Canadian Greener Homes Grant, staff training on eco-friendly product knowledge, and increased visibility and promotion of Energy Star-certified offerings, among other initiatives.

In a release, Mélanie Lussier, RONA’s senior director of communications, public affairs, and sustainable development, said the honour “recognizes the hard work of our merchandising and sustainable development teams who make every effort to offer a great selection of eco-responsible products to our customers.”

Stéphane Gaumond has joined AD as director, business development, for the Building Supplies – Canada division. Bringing with him over 25 years of industry experience, including at WSB Titan, he will manage all aspects of business development for the division’s presence across Canada while maintaining a special emphasis on eastern Canada. He is based in Montreal.