Well before Sears purchased Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH) back in the mid-1990s, Orchard was looked upon as an iconic brand even though the company confined its growth within the state of California and mostly centering around the area of its San Jose roots.\u00a0 Throughout its history dating back to 1931, the company was generally viewed as unique, if nothing more than for the size of its stores -all hardware stores.\u00a0 The current location prototype weighs in at 44,000 sq. feet with an additional 8,000 sq. feet of exterior nursery and garden space.\u00a0 While most noted for its customer services, OSH has never been shy about championing the advantages of its relatively vast retail selling space for a hardware store, which dwarfs most Ace, True Value and Do It Best locations.<\/p>\n
Prior to the Sears\u2019 purchase many industry observers wondered when this unique design would finally expand beyond the considerable confines of California.\u00a0 Orchard management however remained cautious and determined that a temperate pace of expansion was the most useful.\u00a0 Management consistently indicated that the importance of knowing and fully serving customers by carefully maintaining close ties to local communities was a valuable key to its success and thus expansion had to be carefully planned and executed.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the company\u2019s acquisition by Sears, Orchard\u2019s new parent indicated the sincerest form of admiration for its newest retail unit.\u00a0 Similar in total store count though noticeably larger than individual Sears Hardware stores, Orchard\u2019s operations caught the eye of Sear\u2019s management and indications abounded that the blueprint for Sears Hardware Stores would essentially become close to clones of Orchard.\u00a0 In fact, it was expected that Sears would shortly rename its traditional hardware stores with the Orchard Supply Hardware brand.\u00a0 Ultimately, it was expected that Orchard was destined to be the national brand of the Sears Hardware Stores division.<\/p>\n
This plan was never brought to fruition.\u00a0 Less than a decade after Sear\u2019s acquisition of Orchard, Sears itself was acquired by Kmart.\u00a0 Shortly after this acquisition, Sears sold a 19% interest in Orchard to a private equity firm.\u00a0 Again considerable expansion plans for OSH were announced.\u00a0 Again they remained unfulfilled.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of this year Sears Holdings spun off Orchard and OSH became a public company.\u00a0 This year, as an independent, Orchard has again begun to flex its muscles.\u00a0 Not only has OSH used its new found independence to embark on the road to expansion, it has created a customer inspired prototype for its new locations openings while eagerly converting some of its veteran stores to the new format.<\/p>\n
Now comes the announcement that many have waited nearly two decades to hear.\u00a0 Orchard is building two new stores which it expects to open early next year in Oregon.\u00a0 After all the expectations for expansion both prior to and after the Sears merger and again after Sear\u2019s sale of a significant percentage of OSH to an aggressive private equity firm, Orchard Hardware Supply has created a lot of headlines less than a year after it independence from Sears.<\/p>\n
This year the company reduced its debt by more than $90 million and secured financing for store remodels, primarily by executing multiple sale-leaseback transactions.\u00a0 Orchard also refinanced its Senior Secured Credit Facility in October. \u00a0As of Oct. 27, the company had about $64 million of cash and credit available.\u00a0 The company now has eight stores in its new neighborhood format.\u00a0 These include new openings and grand re-openings, all accomplished this year.<\/p>\n
Troubled financials seem to be shaping up despite a still questionable market economy.\u00a0 Despite these concerns, the company has embarked on a prudent spending spree to modernize its store design, better connect with its customer base and promote both short and long term plans to expand and remodel.\u00a0 Finally even outside the state of California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well before Sears purchased Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH) back in the mid-1990s, Orchard was looked upon as an iconic brand even though the company confined its growth within the state of California and mostly centering around the area of its San Jose roots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"post-template-no-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-2476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-hardware","tag-insight","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}