Uncle, nephew team up to operate Brewerton Ace Hardware store

CICERO, N.Y. — With spring right around the corner, the Brewerton Ace Hardware is gearing up for its first full year in business.

The 9,400-square-foot store opened its doors last June at 9655 Brewerton Road in Brewerton (town of Cicero). Jeff Parzych and his nephew Austin Parzych operate the store in a family effort.

The idea first came about when a family member was approached about a similar type of investment, Jeff Parzych says. While that family member passed on the investment, it got the family thinking about options and opportunities, he says. “That sort of sparked it.”

Owning a hardware store wasn’t a completely foreign idea to Parzych. His grandparents operated Alpar Hardware in the Eastwood neighborhood of Syracuse. After doing his due diligence, Parzych settled on Ace Hardware, which is a retailer-owned hardware cooperative.

“Ace is a solid business,” he says, and owners benefit from Ace’s national marketing efforts and distribution network. Ace also worked with Parzych through the entire process from helping to find a suitable location to setting up the store and training employees.

The Brewerton location is a good one with a definite need for a hardware store, he says. To create the store, they leased the space formerly occupied by the antique store One the Farm and an empty 2,000-square-foot storefront next door in the same shopping center. 

“We did quite an extensive remodel,” Parzych says, including taking out the wall connecting the two spaces, installing new flooring and lighting, and painting the entire area. He declined to provide specifics on the investment but noted it was substantial.

According to myace.com, the typical investment to open an Ace Hardware store runs between $650,000 and $1 million, depending on the size of the store. As a cooperative, Ace does not charge a franchise fee or royalties, but does require owners to have $250,000 in unencumbered cash and a net worth of at least $400,000.

Sales have been good so far, Parzych says, adding that the store is hitting Ace’s projected numbers for customer counts and number of transactions.

The biggest struggle has been getting the word out about the store. “We’re very active on social media,” he says. He also has radio ads running on The Dinosaur 94.1, 95.3, 103.9 FM, Fox Sports 92.5 FM, and 1490 AM. “We’re going to be having some TV stuff coming up,” he adds, and the store advertises in Clipper magazine. 

Parzych also plans to start a newsletter and recently started working with a marketing firm. The store also benefits from fliers that Ace mails out.

Starting in February, the store will work with the Cicero parks and recreation department to offer kid’s building sessions. Looking ahead to spring, Parzych is excited for what is typically a busy season for hardware stores. He’s hoping to partner with local farmers to bring a weekly farmer’s market to the store.

He says it’s efforts like that, along with extra services such as screen repairs offered onsite, which help set his Ace store apart from big-box stores like Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse or Home Depot. In addition, the Ace store stocks more uncommon items that the big stores don’t routinely carry, Parzych notes. On top of the roughly 20,000 items carried in the store, he has access to more than 200,000 items through the Ace distribution network to help him get whatever his customers need.

The store currently employs 15 people, most of them part-time. Prior to opening the Brewerton Ace, Parzych ran his own lawn and landscaping business.

Headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, the Ace Hardware cooperative has more than 5,300 locally owned and operated stores in about 70 countries.