This month we are celebrating our 114th anniversary!
Throughout the past 114 years a LOT has changed, and a lot will continue to change as we forge ahead growing our brand of local hardware stores with passion and humility.
We are excited to announce that for the first time ever, we are rebranding our company name!
Our legal entity name will remain W.E. Aubuchon Co., Inc, but instead of referring to the company as Aubuchon Hardware, it will now be referred to as the Aubuchon Company.
This decision comes as we migrate into the world of multi-brand. For us, being a multi-brand company means marketing multiple similar, yet distinct brands to customers. We believe our new multi-brand strategy will allow us to discover new markets, better serve customer needs, and increase sales. The Aubuchon Company currently operates six non-Aubuchon Hardware branded stores: Lyndonville Hardware Lumber & Building Materials in Vermont, Village Hardware in Virginia, and as of January 1st, 2022, four True Value stores in Pennsylvania. These acquisitions have shown us why a multi-brand strategy is so important.
Pictured above is Lyndonville Hardware Lumber & Building Materials, acquired by the Aubuchon Company in December of 2019. We opted to keep the name (since the store was well established, having opened in 1971 and Aubuchon Hardware is not known for lumber and building materials), thus becoming our first non-Aubuchon branded store location.
"As we celebrate 114 years as a private family company, we look ahead to the next generation. Our goal is to build the strongest group of local hardware stores, and more often than not, we find the best stores locally branded and rooted in history. Thinking of ourselves as the "Aubuchon Company" vs "Aubuchon Hardware" is one of many meaningful steps we are taking to be the buyer of choice for these great companies — pushing away from our own track record of homogenization to shine all the light on our local brands (including "Aubuchon Hardware") because we believe local matters more." said president & ceo, William E. Aubuchon, IV.
As the oldest family owned and operated chain of hardware stores in the world, we have been through a lot of change. In the early 2000s, we acquired HardwareStore.com to route to our website instead of just using AubuchonHardware.com. The use of an industry generic domain made it easier for customers to find us online.
After some in-depth multi-brand research and conversations with our stakeholders, we feel the rebrand to the Aubuchon Company will help us accomplish our local growth objectives, while holding onto the foundation of our original name.
This decision goes all the way back to 2017, the year we said goodbye to warehouse distribution and hello to outsourcing. Once our direct-to-store distribution process was smoothed out, we realized that our possibilities were huge. No longer did we have a supply bottleneck; no longer were we restricted to operating exclusively in the Northeast United States. Naturally, we explored! Our first stop? Virginia!
Pictured above: the Aubuchon Company’s first location outside of the Northeast United States. We felt it was important to keep the name “Village Hardware” because the local community was already familiar with the brand.
"We are intentionally focusing more on the local brands within the Aubuchon Company's group of stores. This is really more of a "debrand" vs a "rebrand." stated William E. Aubuchon, IV.
So what does this mean for our employees, customers and stores?
If you are an employee, you will need to re-add the Aubuchon Company to your LinkedIn experience section after our LinkedIn page name is changed. For our customers and stores, nothing is going to change. Our Aubuchon branded stores as well as our non-Aubuchon branded stores will all remain the same.
Gradually over time, you will begin to see changes to our website, social media profiles, and corporate logos.