• Business: Phil’s Ace Hardware 
• Location: Prineville, Oregon
• Owner: Phil Dale 

Phil’s Ace Hardware stores in Prineville and Madras have been the go-to helpful places for Central Oregon residents for decades. As the region has grown in population, so have Phil Dale’s stores. His Prineville store had become so busy that in 2022 it moved to a new location that more than doubled its size. Paladin technology has been part of Phil’s Ace success since the beginning. 

“We’ve been with Paladin since it was a DOS system,” Phil says with a grin, adding that the latest move was a necessary step for his business. “We just outgrew the other location.” 

The Prineville store grew from around 8,500 square feet of floor space to 25,000 square feet. This growth is evident with your first step into the expansive new store. The spacious new layout allows the store to not only increase its offerings but gives it space to keep nearly all its inventory inside, which is a big benefit during Central Oregon’s sometimes frigid winters. 

“Moving in here we basically increased all our departments by about 30%. We added some sporting goods with Big Rock Sports as our vendor and other new products,” Phil explains. “It was a big step, but we needed to do it.” 

Paladin has been with Phil’s Ace Hardware stores every step of the way, too. Both stores use Paladin’s integration with Ace Hardware EDI to simplify ordering and Paladin’s Market Driven Inventory Management™ keeps track of its growing list of products. The system supplies data and the PaladinNsight™ dashboard provides the stores a real-time view of Lost Opportunities, Investment Review, Loss Experience and Non-Performing Assets.

Brian Flande has worked with Phil for over 14 years and says he appreciates the information Paladin gives him about how both stores perform.

“I use the Lost Opportunities function a lot,” Brian says. Lost Opportunity predicts a store’s lost revenue from out-of-stock items and identifies those that need attention to avoid any further lost opportunities.

Brian says he also uses Paladin’s Remote Stock Check feature to know what his Ace regional distribution center has in stock. It makes his ordering more efficient and saves him time.

These tools are especially helpful given the supply chain disruption over the past few years.

From Suggested Order to Comparative Revenue, Paladin provides an array of valuable reports that help Brian keep the business on track, too.

“We use comparative revenue reports daily. They work really well for us,” he says.

Paladin’s Mobile Access lets Phil and Brian keep track of how both stores are performing wherever they might be. It allows them to check on store revenue and inventory through their mobile devices.

Brian says he also likes that Paladin is easy to use. The expansion of the Prineville store meant Phil and Brian had to bring in more employees. So, having a point-of-sale system that is user-friendly is a huge benefit when training the new cashiers.