Orchard Supply Hardware will open a new store, its 89th in California, on Sept. 17. From its beginnings in San Jose as a collective formed by farmers, Orchard first established stores throughout Santa Clara County, and then grew throughout the state. Known familiarly for decades as “OSH,” the company is reclaiming “Orchard” as its name and new logo.
The new store, at Princeton Plaza on Blossom Hill Road in south San Jose, will exemplify the company’s new concept for home-and-garden retailing, combining stock that reflects the home improvement profile of its neighborhood with added customer service elements and a new look and feel.
“We believe that we occupy a very sweet spot in the retail landscape,” said Orchard CEO Mark Baker. “We offer a welcoming, low-stress shopping experience, and a carefully selected range of products in each store, specific to what the neighbors of that store are looking for, along with a much larger selection than the typical hardware store. We believe that our formula means that Orchard will ‘own’ the neighborhood market for home repair, home maintenance, painting, and especially backyard living.”
The Stores
With 80 years’ experience serving California’s customers, Orchard is rolling out a new store template that is exemplified by the 60,000-square-foot Princeton Plaza store. The layout is based on a “race-track” configuration, allowing a traffic flow that maximizes the customer’s ability to find items. The store also features an expanded customer-service area referred to as the “Workbench” where customers will be helped with lock rekeying, custom-cutting of rope, lumber, screens and other materials, pipe threading, and tool and knife sharpening. The paint section has been enlarged, and the store includes a large indoor/outdoor nursery and garden supply area.
Along with the new layout and stock selection, Orchard has introduced a new logo, and a new look and feel for the inside of the stores. This look was launched in 2009, with the opening of the Santa Rosa store in northern California, but will be phased in across the chain over time. The look is warm, functional and colorful, and reflects the company’s deep California and agricultural roots.
Many of the employees at the new store will be moving over from the Orchard store on Branham Lane, which is closing. The company believes that shoppers more than ever need knowledgeable, supportive sales staff for their home maintenance, decor and gardening projects. Orchard will continue to invest in sales associates with extensive expertise and the desire to help. To ensure that each store understands how important this aspect of the business is, Mark Baker, the CEO who joined Orchard earlier in 2011, refers to store managers as the CEOs of their stores, and empowers them to make decisions at the store level to improve shoppers’ experience.
The Company
Orchard Supply Hardware started out in San Jose in 1931 as a Depression-era farmer's cooperative. By the 1950s the stores were offering general hardware merchandise, and became a retail company in the late 1970s. In 1996, Sears Holdings bought Orchard Supply.
Orchard expanded rapidly in the 1980s, reaching 20 stores in 1985. By the mid-1990s, Orchard had expanded to 60 stores. The company jumped into Southern California for the first time in 1993. Since 2000, through booms, busts and recessions, Orchard has opened 18 new stores in California. This year, Orchard announced its buy-back from Sears, and has filed with the SEC for an initial public offering. The company plans to be traded as OSHS on the Nasdaq.