DO IT BEST

Should you invest $850,000 or more into a hardware and building materials business in 2025? That question sits at the heart of every serious evaluation of the Do It Best franchise opportunity — and the answer requires understanding something fundamental that most sources get wrong. Do It Best is not a traditional franchise at all. It is a member-owned cooperative, and that structural distinction changes every financial calculation an investor needs to make. Founded in 1945 by Arnold Gerberding in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Do It Best Corp. originated as Hardware Wholesalers, Inc. (HWI), built on the collective investments of exactly 100 independent business owners drawn from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Gerberding's thesis was straightforward and durable: independent hardware stores, operating in isolation, could not negotiate competitive pricing from vendors. Pooled together as shareholders, they could. That foundational insight has compounded for nearly eight decades into one of the most significant cooperative networks in global retail. By the time Gerberding retired in 1967, membership had grown from 100 to over 600. The cooperative crossed $1 billion in annual sales in 1989, surpassed $3 billion by 2016, and reported over $5.5 billion in sales by the end of 2022. As of its most recent reporting, Do It Best surpasses $6 billion in annual sales and, following transformative acquisitions in 2024, now operates as the world's largest cooperative network of independent hardware and home improvement stores, serving over 8,000 member locations across more than 60 countries. For the investor asking whether the Do It Best franchise opportunity deserves serious due diligence, the answer begins with recognizing that this is not a royalty-extraction model — it is an ownership stake in a cooperative with $6 billion in annual system-wide purchasing power. This independent analysis from PeerSense examines what that means in hard financial terms.

The hardware, lumber, and building materials industry occupies one of the most structurally resilient corners of the U.S. retail economy. Unlike discretionary categories that collapse during recessions, hardware and home improvement demand is anchored by the unavoidable reality that homes and commercial structures require constant maintenance, renovation, and repair regardless of macroeconomic conditions. The total U.S. home improvement market is measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, with the broader home improvement retail segment alone generating over $450 billion in annual economic activity when lumber, building materials, and professional contractor supply are included in the calculation. Do It Best operates across the full spectrum of this demand curve, serving both DIY homeowners and professional contractors through member stores that can operate as traditional hardware stores, full-service home centers, or lumberyards. The secular tailwinds are significant: the aging U.S. housing stock — with a median age approaching 40 years — creates perpetual demand for repair and upgrade spending. Remote work trends that accelerated after 2020 have permanently elevated homeowners' engagement with their living spaces, sustaining elevated home improvement spending well beyond the initial pandemic surge. New construction activity, while cyclical, continues to require building materials distribution at scale. The competitive dynamics of this category are notably favorable for cooperative models: the market remains fragmented at the local and regional level, with independent hardware retailers holding meaningful share against the national chains precisely because of the personalized service, local expertise, and community relationships they provide. Do It Best's cooperative structure directly addresses the independent retailer's core disadvantage — purchasing scale — while preserving the local identity and customer relationships that the national chains cannot replicate. The broader franchising industry context reinforces the timing: in 2025, U.S. franchising is projected to grow by over 20,000 units, reaching 851,000 establishments and generating $936.4 billion in total output, with total franchise employment expected to surpass 9 million workers. Within that expanding landscape, hardware and home improvement cooperatives represent a category with demonstrated $6 billion-plus system scale and accelerating unit growth.

Understanding the Do It Best franchise cost requires abandoning conventional franchise cost frameworks and engaging with the cooperative membership model on its own financial terms. The initial membership fee — which functions as the entry cost into the cooperative network — is $8,500, a figure that stands in stark contrast to franchise fees in comparable retail categories, which commonly range from $25,000 to $50,000 or higher. Earlier data from 2019 indicated the membership fee was as low as $4,400, suggesting the cooperative has adjusted entry pricing modestly over time while remaining dramatically below the category norm. The total Do It Best franchise investment range, however, reflects the full reality of opening and operating a retail hardware business: documented ranges span from approximately $536,400 to $1,580,500 depending on format, geography, build-out versus conversion, and initial inventory depth. A middle-range estimate of $564,500 to $1,342,500 captures the most commonly cited band for standard store formats. These figures encompass location acquisition or lease, marketing materials, and critically, the initial product purchase that stocks the store — a substantial capital requirement given the breadth of SKUs a fully operational hardware store or home center must carry. The liquid capital requirement is a minimum of $150,000, with working capital estimated separately at $72,000 to $168,000, giving prospective members a clearer picture of the cash cushion required to sustain operations through the launch period. The most structurally significant financial characteristic of the Do It Best franchise model is the absence of ongoing royalty fees. Traditional franchises charge royalties of 4% to 10% of gross sales, and national advertising fund contributions of 1% to 3% of gross sales, creating an ongoing cost burden that directly compresses unit-level margins in perpetuity. Do It Best charges no traditional royalty on member sales. Members are shareholders in the cooperative, not licensees paying for brand access, and they benefit from collective buying rebates and profit-sharing rather than paying a percentage of revenue upstream. For a hardware store generating $1 million to $3 million in annual sales, eliminating a 5% to 7% royalty obligation represents $50,000 to $210,000 in annual cost savings relative to a comparable traditional franchise arrangement — a structural economic advantage that fundamentally reshapes the unit economics calculation.

The daily operating model of a Do It Best member-store reflects the complexity and labor intensity inherent in multi-category retail serving both consumer and professional customers. Hardware stores, home centers, and lumberyards require staffing with genuine product knowledge — a customer asking about plumbing fittings or deck lumber expects expertise, not generic retail service scripts. The cooperative provides substantial support infrastructure to help members build and sustain that operational capability. The formal training program includes two weeks of initial instruction at Do It Best Corp.'s headquarters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, comprising 21 hours of classroom training covering product sourcing, operational best practices, and marketing strategy. For prospective members launching their first hardware store with retail experience, Do It Best assigns a professional business consultant to lead feasibility studies, develop business plans, create action plans and timelines, and design customized inventory assortments calibrated to local market demand. Members expanding through acquisition of existing stores or construction of new locations receive project management support from a dedicated project manager who guides the process from initial market research through grand opening. The cooperative's merchandising infrastructure includes over 1,000 daily-updated planograms, which deliver professional retail display standards to member stores without requiring in-house merchandising expertise. The Category Solutions program, developed by Do It Best's internal merchandising team, provides optimized product selection and special pricing incentives designed to boost sales volume and maximize return on investment within key merchandise categories. On the technology and e-commerce front, Do It Best has invested in a dedicated e-commerce division and dynamic new store designs, reflecting a commitment to omnichannel retail capability that independent stores operating without cooperative support would struggle to develop or fund independently. Financing support is also available through the cooperative for qualified members. Notably, Do It Best does not offer territory protections to its members, a meaningful distinction that prospective investors should weigh carefully — members in adjacent markets are not contractually prevented from competing with one another, though local market dynamics and the cooperative's own site selection support mechanisms provide practical guidance.

Item 19 financial performance data is not disclosed in the current Franchise Disclosure Document for Do It Best, which means prospective investors cannot access audited per-unit revenue averages or profit margin data through the FDD process alone. This is not unusual — franchisors and cooperatives are not legally required to include financial performance representations in Item 19, and many do not. The absence of Item 19 disclosure makes independent due diligence more important, not less. What publicly available data does reveal is instructive at the system level. Do It Best Corp. reported over $6 billion in annual system-wide sales across more than 8,000 member locations, which implies an average sales volume per location in the range of $750,000, though this system-level average is significantly shaped by the wide variation in store formats — a small-town hardware store and a large-format home center and lumberyard operate at fundamentally different revenue scales. Industry benchmarks for independent hardware stores in the United States suggest average annual revenues in the range of $1 million to $3 million for viable community-serving locations, with higher-volume professional contractor supply operations capable of reaching $5 million to $10 million or more. The cooperative's scale advantages — collective purchasing power, rebate programs, and shared marketing infrastructure — are designed to improve member-level gross margins relative to what a truly independent retailer could achieve, and the absence of royalty fees preserves more of that margin at the store level. Investors should request detailed financial performance information directly from Do It Best Corp., speak with existing member-owners across different store formats and geographies, and commission independent market feasibility analyses before committing capital. The Do It Best franchise revenue potential is real but highly variable, and the payback period on a total investment of $850,000 to $1.5 million will depend heavily on local competitive dynamics, store format, and operational execution.

The growth trajectory of Do It Best in recent years has been extraordinary, driven by two transformative corporate developments that have redefined the cooperative's scale and competitive position. In April 2024, Do It Best completed a merger with United Hardware Distributing Co., adding approximately 700 member stores and enhancing supply chain efficiency across the network. Then on November 22, 2024, Do It Best finalized a $153 million acquisition of True Value Company's assets, incorporating over 4,500 additional independent retailers into the cooperative's network in a single transaction. Together, these moves catapulted Do It Best to its current position as the world's largest cooperative network of independent hardware and home improvement stores, with over 8,000 member locations across more than 60 countries. The cooperative reported a record number of new members in 2022, with membership growth of nearly 60% over the previous year's high mark — a signal of accelerating organic momentum even before the merger and acquisition activity. From its origins with 100 members in 1945 to 4,200 member-retailers across the U.S. and 38 foreign countries by 1999, to the current global footprint spanning 60-plus countries, Do It Best's unit growth trajectory is among the most sustained in cooperative retail history. Current President and CEO Dan Starr, who assumed the role in early 2016 as the fifth president in the company's history, has overseen the period of the cooperative's most significant strategic transformation, including the headquarters relocation to the historic Electric Works campus in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana in 2022. The competitive moat Do It Best has constructed is multi-dimensional: it combines the purchasing scale of a $6 billion system, proprietary merchandising infrastructure with over 1,000 daily-updated planograms, a dedicated e-commerce division, and the brand equity of both the Do It Best and now True Value identities, giving members access to two of the most recognized names in independent hardware retail.

The ideal Do It Best franchise candidate is fundamentally different from the typical franchise investor evaluating quick-service restaurant or service-based franchise models. Do It Best itself provides explicit support for prospective members who have retail experience and are launching their first hardware store, home center, or lumberyard — indicating that industry familiarity, while not universally required, is a meaningful asset in navigating the product complexity and customer service demands of hardware retail. Candidates with backgrounds in retail management, construction trades, building materials distribution, or related fields will find the operational learning curve more manageable. The model accommodates both owner-operators who are deeply embedded in store operations and investors who hire strong general managers, though the community-oriented nature of successful independent hardware retailing tends to reward visible, engaged ownership. Multi-unit expansion is feasible within the cooperative model — Do It Best provides dedicated project management and market research support for members adding new retail locations — but the capital intensity of each individual store means multi-location growth requires either strong cash flow generation from existing locations or access to financing. Geographic availability spans all major U.S. markets and extends internationally to more than 60 countries, with historical emphasis on expansion in Central and South America and the Caribbean under earlier leadership. Members can operate under the Do It Best brand, the True Value brand following the 2024 acquisition, or their own local store identity, providing brand flexibility that traditional franchise systems rarely offer. The timeline from signing membership agreement to grand opening varies by whether the member is converting an existing store or building a new location, with new construction projects benefiting from the cooperative's dedicated project management support through every phase from market research to opening day.

For investors conducting serious due diligence on the Do It Best franchise opportunity in 2025, the investment thesis rests on three structural pillars: the elimination of ongoing royalty fees that preserves margin at the unit level, the collective purchasing power of a $6 billion system that gives independent operators institutional-grade supply chain access, and the cooperative's accelerating growth trajectory following $153 million in True Value asset acquisitions and the United Hardware merger that together added over 5,000 member locations in a single calendar year. The hardware and home improvement category's secular demand resilience, combined with the cooperative model's ability to preserve local store identity and community relationships, positions Do It Best members to compete effectively in markets where national chains dominate on price but independent retailers win on expertise and service. The total Do It Best franchise investment of $536,400 to $1,580,500 is substantial, and the absence of Item 19 financial performance disclosure means unit-level economics must be developed through direct member outreach and independent market analysis rather than from corporate FDD data. PeerSense provides exclusive due diligence data including SBA lending history, FPI score, location maps with Google ratings, FDD financial data, and side-by-side comparison tools that allow investors to benchmark the Do It Best franchise investment against competing opportunities in the hardware, home improvement, and building materials category with the rigor this level of capital commitment demands. The cooperative's transformation into the world's largest independent hardware network is a material development that changes the strategic calculus for every prospective member evaluating this opportunity in the current market. Explore the complete Do It Best franchise profile on PeerSense to access the full suite of independent franchise intelligence data.