Brian Roebke photo
Clint Kimps stands in the front of the new Kimps Ace Hardware store, opening Monday, April 21, at 540 County Road U in Wrightstown. He said the store is larger than is typical for a community of this size.
By Brian Roebke
Editor
“When we do it, we do it right.”
Those were some of the words from Clint Kimps, one of the owners of the new Kimps Ace Hardware store, opening Monday, April 21, at 540 County Road U in Wrightstown.
Kimps has grown up in the hardware business, going back to when Bernard Kimps and his wife Luella founded Kimps Hardware and Propane Service in 1940. The store in Wrightstown joins the original store in Howard and a store they acquired in Ashwaubenon five years ago.
“We do it in a full manner,” he added. “We actively go and we believe the community deserves just that.”
Kimps said they did everything they could to maximize what’s in Wrightstown because he thinks the people around southern Brown County deserve to have it as nice as the customers of their other two stores.
When the store opens, it will be the most up-to-date of more than 5,000 Ace stores in the country.
In order to be competitive with the big box stores in Green Bay, this store is larger than most for a town of Wrightstown’s size.
“Why shouldn’t Wrightstown get a nice rental department,” Kimps said, noting when they started planning the store, having a nice rental department was an easy decision.
They’re having a greenhouse and offering small engine and equipment service along with all the hardware staples.
“We have Ace’s newest and latest and greatest grilling displays,” he said. “These are the displays we’re going to try out here to see if we’re going to bring them into our other two stores.”
They have many popular grill brands in the store along with the popular lawn mower and power tools.
The average Ace Hardware store doesn’t have a large rental department, but Kimps has a very large selection of rentals from walk-behind skid steers and ariel lifts to hand tools.
“We wanted to make it as absolutely substantial as we possibly could here because Wrightstown deserves it,” he said.
The family has friends in the business who won “coolest store in the country” awards, so they’re doing their best to keep up with them and maybe win an award for themselves.
He feels Wrightstown is such a booming area, and for his entire life, he said he would never want to be part of a ground-up store build, preferring to buy an existing store if they were to expand, but Midwest Expansion showed them the possibility of a store in Wrightstown and they were hooked.
Purchasing the store on Ridge Road in Ashwaubenon got him fired up and it was almost like a new store because they added around 10,000 items to the store with good reviews from customers.
“That was kind of addicting,” Kimps said. “You got to be a part of a second community. We were entrenched in Howard … kind of getting to be able to do that in Ashwaubenon was super cool and my brother said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I want to do it again,’” he said.
When they started building the store they didn’t have bathrooms yet, so he drove to the Shell station in Wrightstown and the cashier said to him, “are you building our Ace store.”
That was the first time he heard that, and he loved that she said “our” store instead of “the” hardware store.
That gave him a tingly feeling that it was indeed starting in another community.
Like communities need parks, he feels communities need a hardware store to help them fix their homes.
“Every town deserves a hardware store,” he said. “A gas station, a grocery store, and a hardware store. To me, those are the three staples and to be able to bring that to a town that hasn’t had one for years, to just be able to land a hardware store here and bring the home décor in with it, it’s fun. It’s a blast, and we sure as heck have had a good time doing it so far.”
He said everyone in the family chips in at all the stores, and before they went ahead with the Wrightstown store, they decided they would all have to be “all in” and they are.
“We are super blessed, we are fully employed, I can’t believe how wonderful our staff is so far,” he said, noting they are training at the other two stores. Kimps said the community has been very warm and welcoming, and he wants to say thank you to all of Wrightstown for the reception they’ve received already and is looking forward to seeing them in the store.