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When customers walk through Intown Ace Hardware in Decatur, Georgia, they will find more than just nuts, bolts, and power tools. Thanks to the way the store’s buyers use Faire, the store might feature a set of Asian-inspired noodle bowls next to the garden supplies, and customers browsing for lightbulbs can also pick up a locally branded dish towel as a gift.
What started as a traditional hardware store with a small four-foot gift section has evolved into something much more ambitious: a community destination where families can find tools for Dad’s project list and unique gifts for everyone else on their shopping list—all in one trip.
This transformation didn’t happen overnight. It took vision, a willingness to take risks, and the right platform to discover products that customers never expected to find in a hardware store. For Intown Hardware, that platform turned out to be Faire.
From hardware store to gift destination: The $1,500 experiment
The story begins over two decades ago with a modest budget and a buyer named Sharon. “Back then, we did not have very many women shopping inside the store,” Sharon recalls. “They were mainly shopping in the garden center for plants, and all of our gifts at the time were associated with gardening.”
Sharon approached one of the owners with a proposal: give her $1,500 to try to attract more women into the store. The owner agreed, and through a lot of trial and error, the gift section started to grow. Over the years, it expanded enough to be moved to the center of the store, with unlikely items flying off the shelves.
Today, Intown Hardware’s customer base includes as many women as it does men, and their power tool section has shrunk from an entire wall to just four feet.
“It just kept snowballing, and the money kept rolling in, and the women kept coming in,” Sharon says. “Eventually, everything got moved to the center of the store, and our gift section expanded to include candles, men’s lotions, purses, clothing, jewelry, perfume—a whole range of things that you wouldn’t expect to find in a hardware store.”
Now, Sharon describes herself as a decisive buyer who isn’t afraid to take a chance on interesting products.
“I’m constantly thinking about getting new stuff in. I’m going on Faire several times a week and hitting the new brands button and seeing what’s out there. I usually don’t have an issue with pulling the trigger—I just put it in a cart and go.”
When she needed to restock some popular ramen noodle bowls, Sharon turned to Faire and discovered Urban Tokyo, a new brand with an extensive collection of bowls, teapots, sake sets, and chopsticks. Sharon went on to find similar wins with French candies, branded merchandise featuring the store’s logo, and various other unexpected products that customers love discovering.
The power of Faire’s discovery tools
What makes Sharon such an effective buyer isn’t just her intuition—it’s having the right tools to discover and test new products efficiently. Faire’s platform has become central to her daily routine.
“I actually have a tab open constantly with Faire on my desktop,” Sharon says. “I go to all the new brands that have come in that week, and I click on them based on the pictures or name of the brand.”
This constant flow of new options allows Intown Ace Hardware to stay ahead of trends and continuously refresh the store’s inventory. The ease of the platform has transformed how the store approaches buying entirely.
“When we first discovered Faire, I was up a couple of nights in a row just going down a rabbit hole,” says Sharon. “I was sitting in front of the TV at night on my laptop, just going, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe all the stuff they’ve got.’ ”
Beyond discovery: The operational benefits
While product discovery might be what initially attracted Sharon to Faire, the platform’s operational benefits have proven equally valuable for a growing business. The easy-to-use invoicing system has been particularly transformative for their accounts payable process.
“When we deal with other vendors as far as invoicing, sometimes we have to chase these invoices down,” Sharon says. “With Faire, all we have to do is click on invoices, and it’s there. We can pay it; we can print it out; we can send it over to accounts payable. It shows up on our credit card bill, and we can reconcile easily.”
The financial terms have also provided crucial flexibility during cash flow challenges. “We have net 60 terms, and we’ve definitely had to use that. Sometimes cash is low right after Christmas, so those terms come in handy during that timeframe.”
Perhaps most importantly for a busy buyer managing multiple vendor relationships, Faire consolidates what could otherwise be dozens of separate accounts. “Using Faire means I don’t have to set up a bunch of different accounts and keep track of it all,” says Sharon. “I can just go on there, and I have all of my vendors favorited and organized.”
Building a community hub
The transformation of Intown Hardware’s product mix has fundamentally changed how customers interact with the store. What was once a quick stop for tools or garden supplies has become a destination for family shopping trips and gift discovery.
“Our customers tend to bring their friends in now when they shop; they bring out-of-town relatives in when they shop. We’re kind of a destination store now,” Sharon says. “We used to be just a regular hardware store with a nursery, and now we’re kind of a tourist attraction.”
The store is particularly popular during holidays, when families can find something for every member in one location. “We’ve become a really good shopping destination because you can get the whole family coming in together, and you can find something for mom, you can find something for dad, any of the siblings.”
This shift has created a new type of customer behavior. Instead of quick, targeted trips, people now spend time browsing. “We have customers that come in daily just to pick up a gift for somebody—not just during holidays, but birthday gifts, cards, just any kind of little thing like that.”
Looking forward: A new model for hardware retail
Intown Hardware’s evolution represents something larger than one store’s success story—it’s a blueprint for how traditional retailers can adapt and thrive by embracing unexpected opportunities and using the right tools.
Intown’s strategy pivot shows the power of understanding your customers while remaining open to surprising them. By using Faire’s discovery tools to continuously test new products and categories, Sharon has built a shopping experience that draws people in for reasons they never expected.
“We’re big risk-takers. We have been for a long time, so we’re not afraid to try anything new,” Sharon says.
For other retailers looking to grow beyond their traditional boundaries, Intown Hardware’s story offers a clear message: Sometimes the best way forward is to give your customers something they didn’t know they wanted, and platforms like Faire make it easier than ever to harness those unexpected opportunities.
The store’s leadership has responded to this success by giving their buyers significant autonomy. As Andy, one of the store’s owners, puts it: “We put a lot of trust in our buyers with their experience to make good decisions, and that gives them the freedom to trial and error and take risks and get new fun things in.”
And the result?
“We work at the coolest Ace on the planet,” he continues. “When your customers start bringing their out-of-town relatives just to browse your gift section, you know you’ve created something special.”
Intown Ace Hardware is a retailer featured in our latest brand campaign, Find What’s Next. See how other shops are using Faire to find their next bestseller at faire.com/find-whats-next
