A new experiential store concept from Ace Hardware is placing popular brands such as Weber, Big Green Egg, Craftsman, and DeWalt front and center of its merchandising strategy.

Last week at its fall convention in Chicago, the hardware chain unveiled a 13,000-square-foot prototype for the store format it calls “Elevate3 Ace,” which promises enhanced customer service and immersive showrooms for select brands.

• The rollout of the new format comes as a number of retailers such as Walmart and fellow home improvement chain Tractor Supply Company invest in freshening up their brick-and-mortar stores, with many launching major renovation projects and investing in in-store technology upgrades.

Dale Fennel, VP of merchandising at Ace Hardware, told Retail Brew that Ace’s focus on elevating brands specifically stems from a decision made two years ago to embrace “experiential retailing,” with the goal of driving sales around its most successful products.

“For us, it’s about brands. We have a small number [of] some of our best, most exclusive brands that are fueling our growth,” he said. “We wanted to try to create this brand immersive shopping experience.”

Ace is trying to “become famous” in key categories such as paint, power, home preservation, and backyards and barbeque, president and CEO John Venhuizen said in a statement—and that means putting some brands on the merchandising pedestal.

Immersive experiences: In the past, Fennel said Ace’s merchandising was more focused on product category rather than brand. For example, a bunch of grills from different brands would be presented in a “backyard-type environment,” while accessories and fuels were in a separate area, he said.

With the new format, he said, products from the same brand will get their own “brand shop.” Ace has already done this with Weber, and Fennel said “sales and profits are way up,” contributing to a 30% uptick in its grill department overall.

Keep reading here.—AV

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Recreational cannabis has been legalized in 24 states, plus Washington, DC, and Guam, and one of the big arguments for doing so has been that it subjects the drug to a gauntlet of regulations and testing to ensure safety.

However, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and industry newsletter WeedWeek found “alarming levels of pesticides” in products, including from popular pre-roll and vape brands purchased from legal dispensaries.

Fox guarding the greenhouse: The journalists sent 42 legal cannabis products it purchased from licensed retail stores in California to a lab, which found that 25 of these products had concentrations of pesticides that exceeded levels permitted by state cannabis regulations or federal standards for tobacco.

Josh Swider, co-founder and chief executive of another lab, Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs, alleged that some private labs—who brands, not regulators, hire—highlight to brands that they approve products at a high rate and find higher potency levels over their testing rigor.

“There’s no checks and balances...to make sure no one’s doing something wrong when they’re not being watched,” Swider told the Los Angeles Times.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Despite the rapid scaling by brands, though, the retail media network landscape needs more collaboration, data customization, and standardization, according to speakers at a roundtable held by the IAB this past week.

Sharing is caring: While some brands are jumping on the retail media network brandwagon, there’s been a lot of collaboration missing between them and the brands that want to place ads with them, as well as the agencies they work with, according to Evan Hovorka, VP of product innovation at Albertsons Media Collective.

For agencies looking for clarity on which retail media networks clients should invest in, data “clean rooms” have been key to illustrating factors like audience overlap and incrementality, according to Kavita Cariapa, SVP, head of commerce activation at dentsu.

Keep reading on Marketing Brew.