Authentic Storytelling Turns Independent Hardware Stores Into Community Favorites: Kerry Hasselbach, Do it Best

Want a real competitive edge that big-box chains can’t copy? Start with a story only your store can tell. We sat down on the floor at the Do It Best Market in Indianapolis with Marketing Director Kerry Hasselbach to unpack how independent hardware and LBM dealers turn authenticity into measurable growth without chasing perfection.

Kerry’s journey from designing handbags to leading co‑op marketing reveals a powerful truth, that industry fluency plus agency-level execution is a force multiplier for small businesses. We walk through how Do It Best’s in-house team acts like a bespoke agency: creative, paid social, display, and reputation management, tailored to each member’s goals. You’ll hear why service-led marketing outperforms product-only pushes, how to translate store life into scroll-stopping posts, and the simple habits that keep your brand top of mind in your neighborhood.

We dig into omnichannel strategy for today’s buyer: organic content meets targeted social, review responses, display placements, and smart email to create demand before customers are ready to swipe a card. Kerry shares practical wins from the new digital marketing solutions platform that centralizes campaigns and reviews into one app, saving time while improving results. We also spotlight Do it Best's CORE, the College of Retail Education, and Market Learning Sessions that turn knowledge into action so teams leave with a plan, not a pamphlet.

If you’re an independent looking to grow foot traffic, strengthen community ties, and build a brand that lasts, this conversation lays out a clear path: be consistent, be unmistakable, and let your customers see the humans behind the counter.

Topics we covered:
• Storytelling as a long-term competitive advantage
• How Do It Best functions as an in-house agency for members
• Managed services across creative, social, display, and reviews
• Why promoting services outperforms product-only posts
• Building an omnichannel plan that matches consumer behavior
• Using analytics to target demographics and share of wallet
• Creating relatable content from everyday store moments
• Progress over perfection for social video and photos
• CORE education and Market sessions to enable teams
• Final advice to lead with authenticity and consistency

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👉 About Stefanie Couch & Grit Blueprint

I'm Stefanie Couch, the founder of Grit Blueprint. I grew up in a third-generation building supply business. I've worked inside dealers, distributors, and manufacturers. I built Grit Blueprint to solve problems I saw in our industry.

Grit Blueprint is a visibility, media, and growth partner for manufacturers, distributors, dealers, service providers, and leaders in the building industry.
We help you get seen, build trust, and become unmistakable.

Transcript

Why Storytelling Wins Locally

Stefanie Couch 0:00

I think it's a huge competitive advantage, and I think storytelling is absolutely one of the best ways to have a long-term brand that really just wins.

Kerry Hasselbach 0:08

Huge. We see a lot of end consumers resonating with this is a business that's been in town 10, 20, 30, 40 years, or the family aspect. And we really encourage our membership to use content that they're creating at their store level. There's so many different clever things that our membership has done to build that connection and to resonate with that emotional aspect with a customer.

Live From Do It Best Market

Stefanie Couch 0:32

It doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, I actually believe that social media posts that are just really unpolished and pretty much what real life looks like. Those are the things that resonate the most with people. Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast, the playbook for building unmistakable brands that grow, lead, and last in the built world. I'm Stefanie Couch, the founder of Grit Blueprint, and I'm a lifelong building industry insider. I was raised here, built my career here, and now my team and I help others win here. The truth is, you can be the best option in your space and still lose to someone else who simply shows up better and more consistent. Each week on the Grit Blueprint, I'm going to show you how to stand out, earn trust, and turn your brand into a competitive advantage that lasts. If you're ready to be seen, known, chosen, and become unmistakable, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Stefanie Couch, and I am here today on site in Indianapolis at the Do It Best Group Market. Welcome to the show, Kerry Hasselbach. Thanks for having me, Stefanie. Yeah, I'm pumped. We are here live in action. There's a lot going on today. We're getting set up. And so kind of the calm before the storm.

Kerry Hasselbach 1:57

100%.

Stefanie Couch 1:58

Awesome. And you are actually the director of marketing at Do It Best. So tell me a little bit about what you do here and what your day-to-day looks like because I know you have a team and we've talked about some of the exciting stuff you're doing.

Kerry Hasselbach 2:08

Yeah. So the Do It Best marketing team consists of a lot of different services and support for all of our members and dealers. And what that looks like is anything from helping them with circulars, helping them do digital marketing. We also are able to support prepping them for grand opening events and stuff like that. And then we also have a managed marketing team, which I'm really excited to talk about too. We have an agency approach within Do It Best. So you have industry knowledge coming right from a marketing team.

Stefanie Couch 2:39

Yeah, that's something that most people don't have because you either know marketing or you know the products, and most people don't know both. So that's a huge advantage. Yeah. I love it. Well, let's talk a little bit though about how you got here because you weren't, you know, here a few years ago, you were doing other stuff that was totally different. You actually came from the fashion world. That's right. You were designing handbags, which I'm very interested in. Hopefully, you still have some cool swag. You actually showed us a hot pink bag earlier a few minutes ago, and I'm it may or may not still be in your bag when you get outside. But I am excited to hear your story. So tell me how did you get from handbags and rug rug design, which you were doing in between, to now working at do it best.

Carrie’s Path From Fashion To Hardware

Kerry Hasselbach 3:19

Yes. So one day, if I do end up writing a book, it'll be from handbags to hardware. Oh love, I love. Uh so I plan on retiring in in hardware. Um, so I actually joined um do it best after moving to Indiana for the handbag company called Vera Bradley, which is right around the block from Do It Best. I didn't really. Okay. Yeah. So that's what brought me to Fort Wayne. And when I left Vera Bradley, I loved Fort Wayne and didn't want to leave Fort Wayne and ended up meeting some people that worked at Do It Best kind of organically. Um and they couldn't say enough things about the people, the members, everything about the company. And that really drew me in.

Stefanie Couch 3:56

Yeah. Fort Wayne's a pretty cool town. Um, I have been there several times, and there's just something really special about this. It's small town, but it's not super small town. So I love that. And you guys have an amazing office at the Electric Works building. So I can see why you would want to work there every day. How do your skills that you use though, doing other things? You know, you you were doing handbag stuff, you also did rug design and a lot of other marketing in that. How do those skills transfer to something that is totally different in the world now that you're in hardware?

Kerry Hasselbach 4:26

Sure. So a lot of innovation is required in all industries. And especially I see a lot of opportunity in hardware. So it's kind of a benefit that I'm entering it with a clean slate. I don't have rules that I know how to follow or to break necessarily. Yeah. It's just where do you see opportunity and where do you see white space? Um, and a lot of times in my career, I was starting new companies or new brands within established companies. So that whole entrepreneurial aspect, I'm really passionate about advocating for small business, small business owners. And so when I found out about do it best and what they do and this, the service that they provide, um, I was on board with that mission immediately, helping small businesses thrive and grow.

Stefanie Couch 5:09

One of the things that I find the most challenging and also the biggest opportunity with our industry is that marketing sometimes can be a little bit of a bad word for a lot of members or people dealers out in them. It's not that they don't find it, you know, something that's could be valuable. They just don't really understand it. They don't usually sit and make branding plans or, you know, figure out how to do social media ads. But that's something you take away from the need to do because your marketing team actually is helping people, like you said, sort of in-house agency that is helping people do those things, social media ads, organic social mailers, events, merchandising, all those things that really matter. Yeah. You're helping them do that. Tell me more about what that actually looks like. Because you can say that, but like what does that mean for a member?

Inside Do It Best Marketing Support

Kerry Hasselbach 5:59

So, like you said, people are so busy running their businesses, they might have a cashier call out and have to run the register while doing payroll, while doing all of the things. So, um, what's really unique and amazing about what do it best offers in marketing is that we have people that are there every day of the week helping out. If someone has a question about social media, we can either guide them in the direction or if they want us to provide those services for them. We have an in-house team that does all of the creative, all the graphic design as well. Um, and what's especially magical, I would say, about do it best is that we're not just marketing the do-it-best brand, we're marketing Stefanie's hardware, we're marketing Doug's hardware. So our team really sits with a member and understands the needs of their brand, what their goals are, if they want to have more in-store traffic, if they want to drive more e-commerce sales, if they're just more about, hey, we're we're in the neighborhood. So brand and awareness, um, they really can kind of cater their recommendation or their consultation to that. And then depending on what the member's situation is, if they have a staff and they have a team that could execute, we could kind of provide that guidance, or we can execute for them on many cases as well.

Stefanie Couch 7:06

And you're doing e-commerce, you're you actually have a new digital marketing solutions platform. Tell me a little bit about that. How does it work? And what are you doing for members?

Kerry Hasselbach 7:14

Sure. So we saw a need, um, you know, time is money, and a lot of members are really busy. So we found a tool that we could implement and offer to all of our members that gives them the ability to manage their social media, both paid and organic, as you mentioned. Um, they can also manage display ads as well as reputation management. So their Google reviews, all on either a desktop platform or it's also available in an app for a very low monthly fee. Um, and our goal in Do It Best Marketing is to provide services that a member couldn't go out and find at retail for the lowest price that we're able to offer. And also we have all of that creative, like I mentioned, we're uploading product content from all of these amazing vendors here at the market, as well as customized content on services. Um, we do see a lot of traction on social media actually when a member is advertising a service that they offer. They're getting more impressions, more clicks on those types of things. And that's bringing customers into the store.

Stefanie Couch 8:14

I personally think that services and that customer niche is one of the ways that independence can win that most bigger competitors can't touch because they have services, but they a lot of times the turnkey part or that type of experience you're giving people is what they keep coming back for that's really remember remembered. And honestly, it's so profitable for most of these businesses. So that's a huge deal, too.

Kerry Hasselbach 8:38

I love that. And the relationship factor too. My team is building relationships with the members, we're celebrating family milestones with them, succession plans when maybe a daughter or a son takes over a business. So we really get to know them in a different way, which people really appreciate.

Stefanie Couch 8:55

This episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast was sponsored by Do It Best Group. Do It Best Group is the largest co-op in the world, and they help independent hardware and lumber yards all over North America win. Do It Best offers services, products, and people that can help you win long term. They are the champion of independence. There's a lot to think about as a business, especially a small business, every single day. Like you said, they're busy already. There's a lot of things changing. AI is coming at people, they don't know what to do or how to implement it. There's a lot of technology out there other than just AI. What do you think that people in the market, whether it's technology based or not, what are they underestimating that your members or dealers should be thinking about?

The Managed Agency Approach

Kerry Hasselbach 9:44

So consumer behavior is ever changing. And there's a lot of psychology that goes into understanding and studying that as well as marketing itself. So it's not just as simple as, oh, we're gonna throw a circular out into the zip code area. It's more who are we targeting? What are they looking for? And then how are we building that demand instead of pushing products onto them? So something that we really need to stay on top of from a consumer standpoint is we need to be getting marketing to that consumer in several different channels. So back in the day, maybe we could have a circular as a bag stuffer, or we would send it to a certain um mailbox list that we would have on file. But what we really want to do is also get them on social media, both paid and organic. We want to make sure that they're seeing us pop up in all different ways on the their internet journey when they're shopping for other categories and other products. So it's really important to have that full omnichannel approach when we're going after customers today. And we also have a team that does marketing analytics on staff, which is another best kept secret. Yeah. Um, and they can really sit with a member and they can go through based on where their stores are located. They can show them, hey, here's the demographics of who's shopping, um, how much share of wallet you have today, what your opportunity is. And so we really have tools and uh skills to marry that all together and set up a plan that actually works.

Stefanie Couch 11:04

Consumers are buying differently than they've ever bought, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're always buying online. Even beforehand, they're doing research online. That's right, they're seeing it. And I think we consistently underestimate how many times people need to see our brand or a product to be ready to purchase. I find that a lot of people want to do a lot of bottom of funnel marketing, which to not use marketing speak is I'm ready to buy, I have a credit card in hand, or I'm going to the store today. But it takes so much to see all of those things before that to get to that point most of the time. And I think we have to be showing people what it's about and telling the stories of why you would want to come buy from you. How does the local business how do they tell those stories that people connect with? Because I think it's a huge competitive advantage. And I think storytelling is absolutely one of the best ways to have a long-term brand that really just wins. Huge. How do you help people tell their stories?

New Digital Solutions And E‑Commerce

Kerry Hasselbach 12:01

Sure. So it's a hundred percent correct. It's such a unique value proposition for our membership to be able to tell their story. So we see a lot of end consumers uh resonating with this is a business that's been in town 10, 20, 30, 40 years, um, or the family aspect. Um, we get a lot of activity around pictures of events, pictures of customers in the store. Um, and we really encourage our membership to use our content that they're creating at their store level. So that could be some people working in the store as they're sweeping, dancing to music. There's so many different clever things that our membership has done. And we get such a kick out of it. And the benefit of being an in-house marketing team is that we can share some wins with other members and help encourage them to think outside the box and try something a little bit different to build that connection and to resonate with that emotional aspect with a customer.

Stefanie Couch 12:58

Another thing I think we need to make sure people understand is it doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, I actually believe that social media posts and different things like that that are just really unpolished and pretty much what real life looks like, those are the things that resonate the most with people. I see videos of contractors on job sites or people at hardware stores doing something very mundane, like you said, sweeping the floors. There are a few customers that I got to interview at um the IHI conference a few months ago. And, you know, Randy's hardware has an amazing YouTube channel. Love that channel. Sullivan's hardware has he is just a riot in every way, but he has a radio show, he's doing Instagram. I think they're on YouTube. They're they're doing a lot of things, but none of that is perfect. It is fun and it's relatable and it gets people's attention. So that's right. Think about how you know you can be out of the box as a as a person that's doing something in your market and just try some stuff. I think that's a really big thing that people they miss. They think the marketing's got to be everything is a hundred percent. Like it's a social media post, it's probably gonna be gone in 24 hours and nobody's gonna see it. You could always delete it if it's not what you wanted it to be. But I love that people can try things. Well, tell me a little bit about if you were a new member of Do It Best, what are the things that you should know that maybe they would not know?

Services As An Independent Advantage

Kerry Hasselbach 14:20

So the the best kept secrets, I keep using this term because so much comes with the co-op membership that doesn't even cost additional. Um, so the marketing team we already talked about. I think there's another thing that I would love to talk about quickly here, which is our member education. So this is something that I think is really fantastic. We have in-house people that are speaking to our members directly. And we also have something called um core or the College of Retail Education. And I really encourage members to make sure that they have some of their store staff attend those when they join our co-op. We do offer them twice a year, and that really goes through hey, each department comes in and says, this is what merchandising does, this is what logistics is all about, um, here's what marketing can do for you and what all of our programs and services are. And then they're right there in Fort Wayne, and we have team members that can come down, get them signed up, help them kind of build a plan and a strategy, and then help them execute it throughout the year versus you just leave with a piece of paper that you file away. So it's really amazing.

Stefanie Couch 15:18

And even at Market here, there's the learning sessions on Friday. There are sessions Saturday and Sunday here at the LBM booth, which are open to all members, covering topics ranging from operational excellence all the way to lumber futures to social media and kind of everything in between. I'm speaking on AI a few times. So it is a really cool value that you give to people to just come and listen to experts that are doing it every day, uh, a lot of which have been doing this kind of a long time, their whole life. You know, Scott Morrison on your team has been in this for 40 years. So that's a big value to people. So don't miss that as an advantage if you are a member or a dealer here. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the show. I want to ask you one last question. If you could give people one piece of advice for a new person starting in this industry, what would you say to them?

Kerry Hasselbach 16:09

I would say lead with authenticity and consistency and stay true to yourself. Um, trying to emulate what competitors and other brands are doing isn't gonna set you apart. It's your unique proposition to a member or to an end consumer, is really gonna be what draws people in and builds that relationship.

Stefanie Couch 16:26

So be yourself. Absolutely. I like to say be unmistakable. And I mean, that for me is a pink dress and a pink hat, but you can figure out what's your unmistakable quality. So I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me, and I hope you have an amazing market. I know you're gonna be doing lots of fun stuff. Better wear your walking shoes the rest of the week because it's gonna be a busy weekend. So it really will thank you for joining me so much, Stefanie. Thank you for listening to the Grit Blueprint podcast. If this episode helped you think a little differently about how to show up, share it with someone in your building world who needs it. If you're ready to turn visibility into growth, then head to gritblueprint.com to learn more and book a call to talk to us about your growth strategy. Until next time, stay unmistakable.