Ace Hardware of Rancho Santa Margarita opened on October 3 at 31541 Santa Margarita Parkway in the Mercado del Lago shopping center. The 18,000-square-foot store serves homeowners, do-it-yourselfers, and contractors with a full range of tools, building supplies, and services. Cesar Velasco, a retail veteran with more than 25 years of management experience, runs the store as general manager.
Large-scale infrastructure often dominates construction coverage, as with the world’s largest canal lock in the Netherlands. The projects that touch most households are smaller: a repainted kitchen, a rebuilt deck, a reorganized garage. Neighborhood hardware stores exist to serve those jobs, and the range of services they carry determines how much of a project a homeowner can finish without calling in a specialty contractor.
The store is owned and operated by Westlake Ace Hardware, which marks its 22nd location in California and its second in Orange County. Westlake has been part of the Ace Hardware Cooperative since 1959, a structure that lets locally owned stores share national buying power while keeping neighborhood decision-making.
Anatomy of a Modern Hardware Store
The Rancho Santa Margarita store organizes its floor into specialty departments and store-within-a-store concepts, a layout that helps shoppers find what they need without wandering a generic aisle grid. Each department carries its own assortment, signage, and staff expertise, which shortens the trip for customers who came for one specific thing.
Departments that define the shopping experience
- Nursery: live plants, flowers, succulents, shrubs, pottery, outdoor living supplies, and gardening products from brands such as Scotts and Miracle-Gro
- Backyard BBQ: outdoor cooking brands including Blackstone, Weber, Traeger, and Big Green Egg
- Power Tools and Outdoor Power: Craftsman, DeWalt, and Milwaukee tools alongside EGO and STIHL outdoor power equipment
- Paint Studio: Benjamin Moore and Magnolia Home by Joanna Gaines paints with color matching services
- Kitchen Connection: gourmet foods, cookware, utensils, and linens from Joseph Joseph, Lodge, OXO, and related brands
Department mixes also reflect changes in how homes are built. Engineered wood products such as mass timber have expanded what is possible in residential construction, and stores respond by stocking the fasteners, adhesives, and finish materials those systems require. A store that tracks construction trends keeps its shelves aligned with what local projects actually use.
Layout choices follow how customers actually shop. High-turnover categories like fasteners and hand tools sit near the entrance, while seasonal displays rotate with the calendar: grills in spring, holiday lights in winter, and gardening supplies when planting season begins. Signage points shoppers to the service counter early, because the propane exchange and key cutting desks generate foot traffic that feeds the rest of the store.
Services That Go Beyond the Shelf
Beyond the product floor, the store offers key cutting, automotive key fob replacement, STIHL outdoor power equipment repair, carpet cleaning machine rental, and propane tank exchange. It also carries fasteners, hand tools, Yeti coolers and accessories, and plumbing and electrical supplies. For many customers, the services are the reason to choose one store over another.
Service menus adapt as construction methods change. Offsite building, including the modular techniques used on the world’s tallest modular tower, shifts what tradespeople need on site and what they restock between jobs. Rental and repair counters, propane refills, and specialty ordering let contractors keep working while their own equipment is in the shop.
- Key cutting and automotive key replacement
- Outdoor power equipment repair
- Tool and carpet cleaning machine rental
- Propane tank exchange
- Paint color matching and custom mixing
Services also build repeat traffic. A customer who brings in a chainsaw for repair will buy parts while waiting, and a homeowner who exchanges a propane tank is likely to pick up a grill accessory on the way out. Stores design the service counter to sit near the merchandise that pairs with each service.
Who Works Behind the Counter
Velasco brings more than two decades of management experience to the store, and the Ace Helpful Promise frames how the team works: legendary service, expert advice, and a convenient, memorable shopping experience. Retail hardware is a knowledge business. Staff who can explain why one anchor type fails in stucco while another holds, or which paint sheen suits a humid laundry room, save customers trips and returns.
The same preparation that helps people enter construction applies to retail. Candidates who prepare for their next job interview with research on the company, the products, and the customers do measurably better, whether the position is a store associate role or a civil engineering post. Both industries hire for attitude and train for skill, which makes the first impression decisive.
The Helpful Promise in practice
Hands-on leadership shows up in store operations. Managers who work the floor stay current on stock levels, customer questions, and product performance, which lets them adjust orders before a line runs out. Westlake Ace Hardware, which owns and operates the store, has followed that model for 120 years. Staff training is a continuous investment: new hires learn product categories, safety procedures, and service counter workflows before they work alone, and experienced staff cross-train across departments so the store never has an unmanned aisle during peak hours.
From Warehouse to Shelf: How Hardware Reaches the Store
The Rancho Santa Margarita location is Westlake Ace’s 22nd in California and its second in Orange County, after a Placentia store opened in July 2024. Additional California stores are in development in Mission Hills, Sacramento’s Land Park neighborhood, and San Leandro. Westlake Ace, headquartered in the Kansas City area, owns and operates more than 175 stores across 13 states.
| Store group | Scale | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Westlake Ace Hardware | 175+ stores | 13 states, Kansas City headquarters |
| Ace Retail Holdings | 260+ stores | Nationwide under multiple banners |
| Westlake in California | 22 locations | Two in Orange County |
| Stores in development | 3 California sites | Mission Hills, Sacramento, San Leandro |
Behind those stores sits Ace Retail Holdings, a division of Ace Hardware Corporation that owns and operates more than 260 Ace stores nationwide under banners including Breed & Co., Buikema’s Ace, Dennis Company Ace, Great Lakes Ace, and Westlake Ace. The cooperative structure lets independent operators share buying power while keeping local ownership.
Supply chains are only as strong as their production links. When a paving producer like C.J. Miller opens a new asphalt plant to serve regional roadwork, it is adding the same kind of capacity that hardware distribution adds when it opens a store: more product closer to the point of use. Every shelf in a hardware store traces back to a plant, a mill, or a warehouse somewhere upstream.
How Contractors Use Neighborhood Hardware Stores
Contractors are a core customer for neighborhood hardware stores. Fasteners, hand tools, plumbing and electrical supplies, and repair services cover the daily needs that dedicated supply houses handle in bulk. For a small crew, the local store is the emergency room of the jobsite: open early, close late, and stocked with the parts that keep work moving.
Even specialized operators plan around dependable supply. Ace Saginaw Paving, for example, expanded its asphalt capacity with a new plant rather than depending on outside producers, a reminder that every trade manages its own supply risk. Trades that cannot justify a plant or a warehouse rely on hardware stores and distributors to absorb that risk for them.
- Daily restocking of fasteners, blades, and small parts
- Emergency purchases when a specialty supplier is closed
- Tool repair and propane refills between jobs
- Project materials for small remodels and service calls
Neighborhood stores also compete with big-box retailers and online sellers on convenience. Online ordering suits planned purchases, but a broken part at 6 p.m. needs a shelf, not a shipping estimate. The stores that win contractor loyalty stock the fast-moving items trades actually burn through and keep the service counter staffed when crews are finishing work.
Training, Certification, and the Future of Home Improvement
The skills behind home improvement are becoming more formalized. Certification programs give workers portable credentials, and employers increasingly treat them as a hiring baseline. Customers benefit too, because certified work carries a documented quality standard.
Concrete is one example. The ACI resource center opened a new chapter in concrete training and certification, giving contractors and inspectors a single place to build and renew credentials. Similar programs exist across painting, electrical, and other trades, and hardware stores support them by stocking the reference materials and tools the courses require.
First-time homeowners drive much of the demand for these services. A buyer who has never painted a room, replaced a faucet, or tuned a lawn mower needs guidance along with the product, and stores that explain the steps in plain terms turn one purchase into a relationship that lasts for years.
With 120 years of history, Westlake Ace has watched several generations learn home improvement in its aisles. The store format keeps adapting: nurseries open later in the season, BBQ departments grow in spring, and paint studios respond to color trends. The core promise stays the same: help customers get projects done right.