Personnel Updates

• Ace Hardware (51) named John Tovar VP of Retail Operations and New Business.

• Do it Best Corp. (165) promoted John Mergy to VP of IT.

• Guardian Building Products (12) named Donny DeMarie as its new CEO.

• Louisiana-Pacific Corp. (21) CFO Sallie Bailey is retiring. Mike Kinney, Director of Investor Relations and Treasurer, will serve as interim CFO.

• Lowe’s (102) announced that Marvin Ellison will succeed the retiring Robert Niblock as CEO.

• Lowe’s (102) announced CFO Marshall Croom is retiring effective October 5.

• Lowe’s (102) promoted Robert Posthauer to Senior VP and General Merchandising Manager of Home Décor.

• Lumber Liquidators (29) hired Charles Tyson as Chief Customer Experience Officer.

• PPG (32) terminated VP and Controller Mark Kelly citing potential violations of accounting policies. Assistant Controller William Schaupp assumes Kelly’s responsibilities on an interim basis.

• PRO Group, Inc. (10) promoted Alex Hernandez to Associate Merchandise Manager and Drew Eflin to Marketing Manager.

Industry Insight

• Home Depot will drop $1.2 billion over the next 5 years to realign its supply chain, which includes adding 170 distribution facilities and direct fulfillment centers.

• Home Depot has installed the largest, single solar rooftop array in Washington, DC at one of its area stores.

• House-Hasson Hardware is expanding its 50,000 sq. ft. Prichard, WV warehouse 300,000 sq. ft.

• Lowe’s rolled out its initial Craftsman SKUs.

• Lumber Liquidators opened its 400^th store.

• Menard Inc. is in the midst of expanding all 300 of its stores. The company has approximately 200 completed and looks to wrap up the process early next year.

• Somerville Lumber (Bridgewater, NJ) has rebranded as Somerville Home Center.

• TreeHouse, the alternative, green products retailer will close its Austin flagship store in the coming months and move its corporate HQ to its Dallas location, which remains open along with the Plano store.

Mergers and Acquisitions

• Boise Cascade acquired Norman Distribution (Meford, OR).

• Mead Lumber Co. is acquiring H.L. Munn Lumber in Ames, IA. That’s the 3^rd acquisition of the year for Mead.

• T.H. Rogers Lumber Co. (Edmond, OK) is acquiring Gordon White Lumber and its 6 locations. The Gordon White stores will eventually adopt the T.H. Rogers banner.

• US LBM is acquiring R&K Building Supplies (AZ).

• U.S. Lumber Group acquired Midwest Lumber, which counts Iowa, North Dakota and Wisconsin and parts of Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota as its territory.

Real Estate

• ABC Supply opened new locations in San Diego, Seattle and Mankato, MN.

• Busy Beaver opened the second of five locations on tap for 2018. This one is in Greenville, PA.

• Drexel Building Supply is building a new location, its 8^th, in Columbus, WI.

• McCoy’s Building Supply will open a new store in Midlothian, TX before the end of the year.

• PPG is building its largest distribution facility to date, a 450,000 sq. ft. facility in Flower Mound, TX, which is expected to come online next year.

• Westlake Ace Hardware will open a new store in Cary, NC this fall. The location will feature a “store-within-a-store” pet supply department.

Just because we don’t mention it here doesn’t mean it didn’t happen – or we didn’t capture it. In the past four weeks, we’ve updated more than 298 companies in the Home Center Operators & Hardware Chains Database, with many of those companies’ records updated at multiple points.