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You know, we have a phrase that we use a lot of analytics, which says, you know, you can’t control the weather, but you can control how it affects your business, right? Because the impacts of the weather are known and therefore you can take an action now to leverage those analytics, to improve service levels, forecast accuracy, drive, top line sales, right?

So all of those other factors, absolutely retailers are grappling with, but the impact of the weather is not only known, it’s addressable. And that’s what we do with folks like Ace. Retail Unwrapped is a weekly podcast hosted by Shelley Kohan from the Robin Report. Each episode dives into the latest trends and developments in the retail industry.

Join them as they discuss interesting topics and interview industry leaders keeping you in the loop with everything retail.  Welcome to Retail Unwrapped, our weekly podcast. I’m Shelley Kohan, and I’m very excited. I have two awesome guests today. Evan Gold, who’s the Global  EVP of Partnerships and Alliances at Planalytics.

And for those of you that don’t know Planalytics, Planalytics helps retailers proactively address the opportunities and risks presented by climate change and weather. And we also have Matt Flentge. He’s the Director of Category Marketing at Ace Hardware. So welcome both to Retail Unwrapped. Thank you for having me.

Really great to be here, Shelley. So today we kind of have a fun podcast, although very important, and we’re going to discuss Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction of spring, and it’s going to be a late spring apparently. And by the way, if you haven’t actually heard the scroll reading of Punxsutawney Phil’s,  Please do so.

It’s very interesting. And I love the fact it brought in AI. So Google that and look that up. Ace Hardware, of course, it was a YardRX, I believe, Matt, that actually sponsored the big Groundhog Day event. And so I was thrilled. I was there on Gobbler’s Knob and it was a lot of fun. And I was very interested in, in hearing what consumers are going to be looking forward to this spring.

So today our topic is weather and how weather impacts both retail and consumer purchasing behavior. So let’s jump right in. And what I’d love to do is first, Matt, if you could tell us a little bit about how the early spring or late spring really impacts your customers. And also how do you or how do your, how does the company get ready for spring?

Yeah, so it’s, it’s obviously nobody has a crystal ball to predict when. Or if how any of that of one spring is coming, but us on our side for Ace, we use a lot of the information that we have. So we look at historical data. We use partnerships like the great partnership that we have with Planalytics actually to look at different metrics and patterns that are out there.

To help guide when that one spring is actually going to come. And obviously we want to set our stores up for success. So whether it’s an early spring or a late spring, we know that we’re going to have the right products at the right time for our customers and the communities that we serve. And that’s, that’s the whole goal of this.

And obviously you mentioned it before yard or X, it’s a brand new program that we’re launching that brings the right products at the right time delivered for free for our customers. And it’s a great program that is a tailored. Subscription for lawn care. So when you think about fertilizers, weed control, insect control, we have all the right products at the right time.

So we’ll bring it to you when the season is right or when the season breaks. So we’re looking at all that to be is as helpful as possible with with our customers. And that’s the whole goal for ace is everything that we do is built off of those red vested heroes on the front line. So prepping them and arming them with the right information and bringing that straight to the customers when they need it.

And that plays right into the ease and convenience that we’re seeing from a lot of shoppers kind of gravitating towards things that are convenient and easy. So nice job on putting together that subscription program with YardRx. So Evan, I don’t want to put you on the spot here and I certainly don’t want to create any tension between you and Puxy Phil, but did you agree or not agree with his prediction and what does this mean for retail?

Well, Shelley, thanks again for the opportunity to join you today. It is absolutely a pleasure to be here and talk with you and Matt and share some thoughts and insights and contribute to the valuable enlightening and useful content that you and the Robin report put out to to the industry. So. First off, I am a resident of Pennsylvania, so I love Phil.

He’s one of our most famous and recognizable characters. That said, yeah, his skillset sometimes has a lot to be desired, right? He’s got a kind of a 50, 50 shot on getting it, getting it right. Look at analytics, as you can imagine, we put a lot more, more science and analytics behind our outlook than Phil does, but certainly gathering and hearing.

From, from Phil, it’s a cultural phenomenon. Interestingly, Phil actually might just be onto something this year, right? We actually agree with Phil that it’s going to be a later start to, to spring, but we’ve actually been preaching that for a while, right? Phil didn’t share his outlook until just a few days ago.

However, we’ve been working with businesses like ACE on this upcoming spring, really for over the past year.  That’s really interesting. And I’ll give you the scuttlebutt behind the scenes. I hope I’m allowed to say this, but Ace Hardware, who again, sponsored Groundhog Day, they didn’t even know what the prediction was going to be.

So it was really like right there in the moment event. So Evan, I just want to go back and ask you, when you look at spring in terms of weather demand categories, what have you seen? What happened last year? Yeah, that’s a great, great question, right? Spring is absolutely a metal tight. This is one of the most weather sensitive period.

So weather sensitivity is like the percentage of sales that are affected by the weather,  you know, or said differently. How much does weather move a customer out of their comfort zone? So for home maintenance businesses like traffic is plus or minus 5 percent in a typical year.  So weather matters a lot in spring.

And again, Matt, I’ll talk about it from an ACE hardware perspective. It’s also important to understand the comparison, and this is really, really critical. So retail Q1 of last year of 2024, it was the fifth warmest spring in 130 years, all three months. Yeah, all three months of the quarter were warm. I think February was the warmest since 2017.

March was the warmest since 2020. April, I think, was around the 11th warmest in 130 years. So the quarter as a whole, particularly locations east of the Rockies, it was extremely warm. So we had a great start to spring last year. So as you talked about at the intro, Shelley, you know, we measure the impact that climate and weather has so that retailers like ACE can proactively manage it at scale across systems and processes.

So we do that through what we call weather driven demand or WDD, which is the demand signal that specifically quantifies the lift or drag that weather and weather alone has. For each product time and location. So while seasonal categories, like we just talked about this challenging start to spring, a lot of those seasonal categories are going to  have a challenging comps at the start to, to spring this year, there are some regional opportunities, right?

So again, as much as we love Phil, right, he doesn’t really call out which area of the country he’s, he’s providing his outlook for, and certainly Matt and the team at ACE know, you know, the U S it’s a very. You know, broad country, very diverse from a climate and weather perspective. So while we’re expecting this challenging spring overall, there are opportunities, particularly in places like the southwest or the southwest coast, even in parts of the northwest where it’s going to be warmer.

Than last year. So you can expect five, 10, even up to 20 percent increases in demand for a lot of those seasonal categories that, that ACE carries the same also goes for store traffic, right? It’s not just what consumers are putting in the baskets. Are they actually going to the store to, to purchase those items?

And, and again, a retailer like ACE, you know, on a nice warm, sunny day or weekend, they’re going to come in and buy a lot of categories, you know, for, for projects and home maintenance items.  Yeah, and I know I’m going to build on what Evan said, Matt. I believe that spring is your holiday time, your holiday season

It’s a big, big time of year for you and what we like to call home restoration. I know Ace Hardware doesn’t use the term home improvement, but I believe it’s home restoration, right? So, tell us a little bit about the business and how big is spring for your business?  Yeah. And you’re, you’re absolutely right, Shelley.

Like we, we use home restoration or home preservation maybe is, is more accurate. It’s, it’s all about, I mean, homeowners, that’s the number one asset that they have. And that’s the one thing that we want to make sure that they continue preserving. And Evan’s right. You’re right. It’s the most critical time of our, of, of our year.

Really? It, you, you’ll have a really good indication of how your year is going to go based off of March through call it. May, maybe a little bit into June, based off of those weather patterns. If you get a nice early break to the spring, like we did a little bit last year, that’s, that’s critical for us in order to get out the gate and really moving.

And, and honestly, when you look at it last year, we had a good early start to that spring, like Evan had mentioned, but really we’re, we look at it, the region in seven different ad regions. So when you think about that weather breaking, we have, you know, tropic, we have South desert, California. North, far North Northwest.

So we’re trying to plan everything around these different ad regions. So we can be as specific as possible with what we’re recommending or what we’re showcasing out there in the market to put our stores and set our stores up for success, but also to serve the communities in the way that they need to.

When you think about it, these programs, it’s all about, there’s different grass types. There’s different fertilizer types. There’s, there’s different segments of customers. They’re different. different insects that are in the south versus the north. So all of that has to be taken into account. And when the season breaks, we have to be ready for that.

And not to go back to it, but YardRX really helps with that because it’s building this customized program and building a recommendation based off of all of those factors. So when a consumer enters into that program, it’s looking at your grass type. It’s looking at how, what your yard size is, and it’s making a product recommendation that’s tailored to your specific area. So we take that guesswork out of it, make it super simple for the customers and a lot easier for the associates to be right on pace with what we’re doing. And then when we’re looking at those weather temperatures in the weather breaks, we can make sure that we bring the right products to you when you’re going to need them.

No need to store them. No need to worry about. Hey, I have to go and pick this stuff up. No, we’re, we’re gonna take care of all that for you. And we’re gonna save you trips to the source. It’s all about, it’s all about convenience. We’ve, we’ve built our model on that. It’s all about serving the communities and being convenient for the customers when they want the products and when they need them.

Yeah. And I want to ask you, so based on what you’ve seen last year and even going into this year, have you seen any like consumer shopping behavioral shifts? We talked a little bit about convenience and ease, but have you seen anything else where customers are spending their money or even, you know, changes in how they’re, how they’re shopping?

Yeah, this is this is interesting. And the heart of our businesses is focused around service, convenience and qualities. That’s that’s our differentiator with the competitors. That’s what we’ve built our business on. And that’s never going to change. However, where we meet the customer and how we deliver on that promise and those services that does change based off of where their attention is.

And a lot of the consumer’s attention. It’s no surprise. It’s gone to the digital landscape. That’s where we need to meet our customers. And we need to bring that service quality and convenience To the consumers through a digital experience. And that’s, that’s where the focus has been for us. And we’ll continue to evolve our business to meet them where they’re looking and where the attention is.

And that’s where, you know, a lot of these programs that we roll out yard or X buy online, pick up in store, buy online, deliver from store, all those services that we offer to our customers to make it as convenient and easy as possible, and continue to bring that red vested support that we’ve been known for, for the past a hundred plus years.

That’s great. And I know, Evan, Plantalytics has been collecting data for a long, long time, and you are experts in understanding consumer behavior. So, tell us, what are you seeing? What shifts are you seeing?  Yeah, so, it’s a great question, Shelley. You know, weather is the largest external driver of consumer purchasing, right?

There’s no other external variable that will influence the consumer demand as frequently, directly, immediately as the weather. So, put simply, weather, Drives need, need results in consumer purchasing, and that need can be based on, you know, everyday volatility in the weather, like Matt was just talking about, and that’ll drive the customer to make or potentially not make a purchase.

There’s a trillion dollars every year and top line retail sales that are affected by the weather. Right? So it’s, it’s a large amount of volatility. Now, many times consumers are not only shopping based on need, they’re shopping. At need, right? And but that often, frankly, comes from extreme weather events.

So that could be tornadoes, floods, other events that can have huge effects on consumer purchasing. So in the US, you know, unfortunately, we have a billion dollar weather disaster. every three weeks now, which is just crazy, right? It’s related to like once every four months back in the eighties. So we had a lot in 2024.

Unfortunately, as we all know, 2025 is not off to a great start.  you know, our certainly our thoughts and hearts are with those impacted by the Fires in California, but it’s more than that, right? Businesses just, you know, like Matt and the team at ACE, they are trusted members of our community. So being prepared to address these proactively, ensuring they have the items that consumers are looking for when and where they’re needed the most ensuring safety protection, right?

That’s really what consumers are looking for and count on from businesses like ACE, and they do so much good and shine a light really on what’s possible within our, our retail community.  Now that’s great. Now I want to touch upon some other external environmental factors. It’s so funny when I sat down to actually interview Paxitani Phil, and I said I cover retail and consumer behavior, the first thing Phil said was, through his handler of course, was that he stays away from economic you know, wide scape heavy subjects.

So I couldn’t ask him about tariffs and economy and all that stuff. Smart groundhog for sure. But Evan, I’m going to start with you with the tough questions. So there’s the predictable and then there’s kind of the unpredictable. And the predictable is major shifts, shifts of events like Easter, always in spring is a big change.

So there’s things that you can predict that are weather related, but there’s also a lot of unpredictable things that I have to say it. Because it’s a very broad topic, topic that’s been out there and that’s the tariffs, you know, how is that going to impact and, you know, can you, do you have any insights on that?

Yeah, so it’s, it’s also is a great question. I think a lot of retailers are, you know, it’s such a changing, you know, environment for sure. We know, right? Yeah. Phil doesn’t account for the retail calendar or that, you know, Easter’s three weeks later and the impacts of tariffs, right? You know, all of those, you know, throw a wrench into the works around from a planning perspective.

Given then. You know, you add in weather and weather volatility, right? It can really, you know, provide a wrench for retailers to try to grapple with. But again, let’s, you know, put it into perspective here, right? With analytics and the power that we have through modeling against consumer behavior, retailers can Use these analytics to quickly gain an understanding for how weather is going to drive consumer purchasing and put them in a position to proactively prepare for solutions like this spring.

So, you know, we have a phrase that we use a lot of analytics, which says, you know, you can’t control the weather, but you can control how it affects your business, right? Because the impacts of the weather are known and therefore you can take an action now. To leverage those analytics to improve service levels, forecast accuracy, drive top line sales, right?

So all of those other factors, absolutely. Retailers are grappling with, but the impact of the weather is not only known, it’s addressable and that’s what we do with folks like Ace.  No, that’s great. And I know that, so Ace Hardware, for those of our listeners who don’t know, this is a co op, so every store owner or a store owner may have several stores, but they own the business.

So they order what they want, they order their products, they do their assortments, and it’s all catered to very localized,  communities, which is fantastic and I think actually a secret to their success. But Matt, so how do you help store managers and business owners deal with or cope with some of these external factors?

Yeah, this is, this is a great question, Shelley. And, and honestly, it’s, it’s both challenging and rewarding at the same time, because our biggest strength is the fact that we’re locally owned. And we have 5, 000, more than 5, 000 stores out there that are small businesses that are supported, supporting the communities out there that they serve.

And this is, Both a great strength, but it’s also challenging and it poses the challenges because the owners are wearing every hat within the store. They’re the marketing team. They’re the accounting team. They’re the finance team. They’re the HR team. They’re out there doing everything. Not to mention they’re, they’re also helping customers.

They’re also doing the projects that are in the store. So they have a lot of hats to wear out there. Our job on the corporate side is to make sure that we arm them with the information that’s necessary. And we take the guesswork out of some of this stuff. We have to play the role of. We have to be, we have to partner with folks like Evan and the planalytics team to make sure that we’re ahead of the trends to make sure that we’re preparing them for one spring is going to hit that were identified all of those pieces.

So they can not have to worry about that. Our job is to make their lives more simple to give them. Time back to what they should be doing, which is serving the customers in their communities, which is helping out when there are disasters to be able to put back into the communities that they are serving in the ways that they’ve been given back.

And that’s that’s a that’s a big load on our shoulders to Take, but that’s what keeps us coming back. And that’s what we pride ourselves on is, is yes, they’re on the front line. There’s a hundred thousand red vested heroes out there serving customers, serving their communities. Our job is to make sure that we put them in the best position to handle those conversations and to be able to put their best foot forward.

And that’s really what we do. And that’s the passion of everybody here. At ACE corporate offices is all in the support of our retailers and everything that we do from from looking at all these trends. And you mentioned all the tariffs and all of that. That’s, that’s something that we take care of for them and that we, we try to stay ahead of.

So they don’t have to, they don’t have to worry about that. We need to take that off their plates.  That’s great. What I love about your business model is, and again, one of your big success stories is you really focus on taking the operational processes off the shoulders of the store managers and let them actually work with customers and be the front line.

I know it’s like a. You know, concept that every store should have, but it’s actually executed in your over 5, 000 stores. So kudos to Ace Hardware and the team. So any closing thoughts, Evan or Matt? Well, I just, again, want to say thanks for the opportunity. I mean, I certainly learned a lot. We’ve been partners with, with Ace for a while, and I continue to learn a lot about their business and appreciate what they do for, for the retail community that they, that they serve.

Yeah, ditto. I, Shelley, one, I appreciate you having us on and the opportunity to, to get out here and talk through this and, and the partnership with Planalyticslytics that we have and just the way that we go to business. It’s, it’s all about the stores and, and the communities out there. So really appreciate it.

No, that’s great. And you know, Evan, you won’t toot your own horn, so I’m going to toot it for you because I know you’re very modest, but you actually put out a white paper recently in conjunction with the NRF, which is great, called, Climate proofing retail. So if you haven’t downloaded it, go to Planalytics website, download it.

I know you won’t tell people to do that, but I can, it’s great. And I’m a big fan of Planalytics as you know, and thank you for the work you do with Fashion Institute of Technology. So, we always like that, support we get there as well. We appreciate that. And yes, the information with the N. R. F. The collaboration there.

It’s it’s it’s been a great partnership with with that group. We actually just launched and I will do that. I guess a little bit. The this weather IQ, which is a weekly update on how the weather is impacting retail businesses, which is accessible on the N. R. F. Center for Retail and Consumer Insights page from the N.F. site. So if you’re, Anybody can access it. And for NRF members, you can actually access a lower level of detail with some additional analytics that gets updated every week. So we’re really thrilled to partner with the NRF. And again, Shelley, appreciate you having the opportunity to talk to this and putting a spotlight on that.

Absolutely. And for our listeners, next week we have an exciting podcast. We’re going to have Pam Danziger. She’s one of our most prominent writers and she writes about all things luxury. And we also have Mickey Alam Khan on. He is the CEO of Luxury Roundtable and founder of American Marketer. And they will be talking about the Sachs Niemann merger acquisition and kind of the domino effect of what’s going to happen with the luxury market.

So don’t miss out on that. And I want to thank all of our listeners for your support and continue to support. Please reach out to us. You can find us on therobinreport.com under contact us. Thanks so much. And thanks, Matt and Evan.  Thank you for listening to Retail Unwrapped. We’ll be back in one week with another podcast.

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