It’s our pride in the red, white and blue…
It’s our commitment that always comes shining through…
It’s everything that you need… the hardest working people in America Find Value at Blain’s Farm & Fleet.
Eddie Rabbitt’s original 1994 song saluting the commitment Blain’s Farm & Fleet has delivered to its customers said everything the Midwestern discount supply store could possibly say, and more. For more than 60 years, Blain’s has prided itself on delivering, adapting and expanding the products and services people needed.
Home improvement projects. Home goods. Apparel. Toys and games. Automotive services. Pet supplies. You want it; Blair’s has it.
That was the vision William Claude Blain and Norman Albert “Bert” Blain had in mind when they founded the first 1,000 square foot store in Janesville, Wisconsin in 1955. Depending on who you ask, their concept of a discounted retail store may have been the first in the US, as the Wal-Marts, Kmarts and Shopkos of the world didn’t surface until the early 1960s.
Expanding their offerings and vision, the Blains methodically grew to four states throughout the Midwest, offering a place where people could not only get what they wanted, but be comfortable doing it. Today, the family owned company (Jane Blain Gilbertson is Executive Chair of the Board and Mark Hasting is President and CEO Mark Hasting) continues to deliver on the words of Rabbitt’s song:
We’re making it easy to save you time…
we’re bringing you quality… the top of the line…
So many choices… and we believe… the hardest working people in America Find Value at Blain’s Farm & Fleet.
We sat down with Sara Iverson Smith, Senior Director of Real Estate, Facilities and Construction, to get a peek into what the discount supply store has planned for the future.
Give us a snapshot of your brand.
Blain’s Farm & Fleet is a family-owned, regional retail chain serving the Midwest since 1955. With 45 stores across Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan, our brand is synonymous with quality, value, and exceptional customer service. In addition to our physical locations, we offer online shopping nationwide, making our wide array of dependable products accessible to customers everywhere.
Blain’s provides an extensive selection of products across various categories, including automotive, home improvement, agriculture, clothing, footwear, and pet supplies. Our stores are designed to be a one-stop shop for hardworking families and individuals, offering everything they need to support their lifestyles, whether they are farmers, outdoor enthusiasts, DIYers or simply looking to maintain their households.
Our commitment to the community and our focus on delivering reliable products have made us a trusted name in the regions we serve.
What type of consumer are you targeting?
Blain’s Farm & Fleet primarily targets hardworking, community-oriented individuals and families who value quality, practicality, and tradition. Our typical customer leads an active and fulfilling lifestyle, whether starting on their own, raising a family, running a farm, or enjoying their retirement years.
They enjoy a wide range of activities, from outdoor sports and DIY home projects to gardening, birdwatching, and family gatherings. Whether shopping for pet supplies, home improvement tools, agricultural equipment or seasonal items, our customers know they can rely on Blain’s Farm & Fleet for a wide selection of dependable products at fair prices.
How does the design of your facilities cater to what today’s consumers are looking for?
One significant change we have made in the last few years is moving our pet department right to the front of the store. We have an initiative to target what we are known for, which includes a large and robust pet department to serve all our furry friends, whether personal pets or the farm kind. We have expanded our offerings and are super proud of our private pet food brand, which is high-quality pet food.
Regarding physical space, we have updated our storefront design to incorporate a barn roofline. It highlights our rural roots, is more visible from the street, marries our brand with the physical structure and tells our customers that we are here to provide quality products to hardworking farmers and families at an affordable price.
Walk us through how and why it is designed the way it is.
Our strategy is to treat our customers like neighbors. So right when you walk in, you have customer service up front and the pet department next to the entrance. We created small brand shops for our premium brands, like Carhartt, DeWalt, Milwaukee, Ariat, etc., that draw customers into those store areas. Another differentiator is that we have department leaders and specialists in each area, so if you need help, you can always find an expert to answer your questions.
It’s frustrating when you’re shopping at a store, and the employees don’t know their products. Our associates know their stuff and are happy to help you. Not only that, but we also service what we sell—for example, we have a small engine repair department and our tire and battery department to take care of your vehicle’s needs. We’ve updated these areas in the last few years with better technology, including the latest diagnostic equipment.
What are some of the trends happening on the architecture side of the design business?
Architecturally, we are always looking for more efficient, durable, and sustainable building materials. But it must be data-driven. For example, we sometimes have difficulty obtaining city approval for metal buildings. Still, there have been so many advances from pre-engineered metal buildings to architectural metal panels it’s worth the extra effort it takes to convince them of the benefits.
The key is to get a municipality to understand the durability of a metal panel and that the appearance is quite attractive versus the preconceived notion of a pole barn. With the rising costs of labor and continued high construction costs, retailers need materials that last the longest and have the least maintenance.
For sustainability, we will continue to explore how we can use less waste, recycle what we are using, and find ways to support our neighbors in their recycling efforts. I aim always to put less in landfills and protect our environment because that is what farmers and outdoor enthusiasts like me, and our customers enjoy. Prefabrication is a growing industry.
We tried this at my last job in the healthcare space, and I’m still looking for a good application here at Blain’s. But in 2022, it was a $91 billion industry projected to grow to $120.4 billion by 2027. We need to leverage this in our locations to see how we can save time and money by building components offsite. The icing on top; it also reduces waste.
What are some of the more prominent features being added today?
We’ve switched from VCT and LVT to sealed concrete floors. The weight of our wide span and palette movement is too hard on the floors and sealed concrete wears better. We’ve added self-checkouts to provide our neighbors with options. We will always have cashiers there to help, but now, if you want a quick in and out, you can use our self-checkout function.
Eight years ago, we started adding customer drive-throughs to all our stores, which was well before COVID-19 shutdowns prompted many of our competitors to do the same. We now have an omnichannel experience where our neighbors can buy online, buy in-store, pick it up at the store, or get it delivered to their homes. You may be surprised to learn that while we are in four states today, we ship our merchandise nationwide.
Give us a rundown of your market’s layout.
Blain’s is based in Janesville, WI, and has 16 stores in our home state. In Illinois, we have 19 stores; in Iowa, five stores; and, most recently, we have expanded to Michigan with five stores.
What’s the biggest issue today related to the construction side of the business?
Because I run real estate and construction, I will list two issues. One is the availability of good quality, empty box stores to remodel. With high land and materials costs, it is much easier and cheaper to retrofit a building with existing infrastructure. We have the highest net absorption in the last decade, which is great for our economy but not so great for us in real estate.
So, if we want to go to a new location, we are likely going ground up, at a higher land sale price and a much higher construction cost. For construction, the cost of labor and materials increased during COVID-19 and has not substantially decreased.
It’s harder to show an ROI when the same building costs 25-50% more. In 2022, we reached a “crisis level” in our construction workforce, according to the Home Builders Institute, because we had almost half a million open construction industry jobs.
Now, the Association of Builders and Contractors estimates the industry needs to hire 650,000 additional workers on top of the average hiring pace.
Talk about sustainability. What are you doing?
Blain’s has historically recycled tires, batteries, cardboard and pallettes. We are very proud to have a decades-long track record on this, and we have just recently expanded our recycling to include plastic hangers, plastic wrap, and more extensive cardboard and pallet recycling.
I am super proud that we were intentional about going to all the recycling locations and making sure that what we were sending them was getting reused. The palettes that cannot be rebuilt are being made into animal bedding. The cardboard is made into egg cartons and cereal boxes, and the plastic into plant pots.
We started in 2023 with two stores as a pilot and grew it to 20 locations in Wisconsin by year’s end. This year, we’ve added eight more stores to this expanded model. To date, we’ve offset over nine million pounds of waste that would otherwise be in the landfill. I have more fun ideas on this front, but you just have to wait and see what I can work out in the next two years.
In today’s complicated landscape, what type of opportunities do you see moving ahead?
I think Blain’s is in an excellent position to get a whole new segment of customers. We just need to get our story out there. We’ve always been the go-to store for farmers and rural consumers, but I don’t think enough people know how great our modern general store is for outdoor enthusiasts, DIYers, pet owners, families, and just about everyone else.
I didn’t know about Blain’s when I started here five years ago, but now I get most of my home goods there. It’s just better prices, a better shopping experience, and a quick and easy way to do my shopping in one trip.
I always joke that I pull up to the drive-through, and they load up my cat food, dog food, and salt bags. I drive home and make my kids unload it all, and I never have to touch it. I don’t know what I will do when my youngest moves out in a couple of years. We are also upgrading our ERP system. The integration that will follow will be a game changer for our business, and our customers will benefit.
Are you optimistic about what you are seeing out there?
Yes, because we provide the essentials people need at a good price. Regarding construction, I am concerned about the lack of labor supply and the continued inflation of materials. We need many more young people going into the trades, and we are losing a lot of expertise in the crafts like carpentry.
We must capture the young kids as early as middle school and show them they can have a fulfilling and rewarding career in the trades and work-life balance we all crave.
I also really appreciate our immigrant population and how dedicated they are to supporting our industry, so I would like to see the establishment of a more straightforward path to citizenship. I am optimistic about the continued focus on getting girls into STEM. I wish I had known all the paths available to me when I was younger.
Today, kids can see a much wider breadth of careers at job fairs, school career days, and other focused interventions, something we never dreamed about in the ’80s when our choices seemed much more limited.
What trends are you seeing?
Real estate trends discussed at length are creative uses for old malls and office buildings. That model is not as helpful to Blain’s because we need a large footprint for our brick-and-mortar stores and extensive yards.
What is exciting is when cities understand where the gaps are in their zoning codes and are making changes to support workforce housing, comprehensive plans that include affordable housing for all segments of the population, and different sizes of property used to support creative ways of filling up our growing communities.
It doesn’t help us retrofit an old mall and build a store if we cannot staff it or the associates cannot afford to live and work in the same area. Solving this will go a long way in supporting not just our stores but also our communities. Sustainable design is a huge buzzword, but it has some real payouts.
We upgraded all our stores to LED lighting over the last seven years and more energy-efficient HVAC units, and it has saved a bunch in usage and billing. It also has helped reduce the entire electrical supply needed to power a store, which saves costs when we design a new building.
What is the secret to creating a “must-visit” facility environment in today’s competitive landscape?
At Blain’s, we like to introduce ourselves to the community first. We are a family-owned business that has never left a community after we’ve built a store. Our owner is passionate about being there for the long haul and this resonates when we go to a planning commission or city council meeting.
Physically, our storefront is large and welcoming, and our customers get excited when they hear they’re welcome to bring their pets. Creating a positive customer experience will have them coming back for more. We offer the Blain’s Best Price Promise, which means we pass value onto our neighbors, not Wall Street. Finally, we treat our customers like neighbors by being friendly and serving them with honesty, integrity, and respect.
What is today’s consumer looking for in your facility?
Great value and great brands at fair and honest prices. A company that embodies a hard-working ethic and an agile, scalable infrastructure, constantly improving and resilient. We give back to so many causes that it’s impossible to name them all here.
We focus on kids, FFA, Toys for Tots, the American Heart Association, and charities local to the communities we serve. Having that local feel, like we are a member of the community and the favorite neighbor you go to for tools, advice and a treat for your pet.
Tell us what makes your brand so unique.
We have a practical and aspirational mix of carefully selected brands that are “best at better,” making us an inspiring destination for our customers’ work, home, and outdoor lifestyles. We are constantly innovating but also provide quality goods at fair and honest prices.
Story by Michael J. Pallerino, Editor of Commercial Construction & Renovation magazine. Over the past 30-plus years, he has won numerous awards, including the “Jesse H. Neal Editorial Achievement Award,” recognized as the Pulitzer Prize for business-to-business magazines. He can be reached at mikep@ccr-mag.com.
One-on-One with… Blain’s Supply’s Sara Iverson Smith
Describe a typical day.
I start my morning with Wordle and coffee. My family has a group competition on who is best & fastest at the NY Times games. Nothing is more humiliating than having your kids beat your time in the mini crossword by minutes. But it keeps us constantly communicating and provides some good family jokes. I then have breakfast and head to the office by 7:30. Every workday is different.
Some days, we focus on a new store; other days, we focus on resets and remodels; some days, we focus on finance and accounting for CapEx and OpEx; and others, we play with design and strategy. I am so glad there are many different avenues I can work on and so many great people on our team who operate independently.
I just keep them all rolling and communicate our accomplishments to leadership. I am not good at sitting still for long, so I often walk to other departments instead of sending emails. I try to communicate face-to-face as much as possible. I get a good ride on my road bike (pedal) at night, then watch Jeopardy with the family.
Then, my husband and I watch a British detective show or sit in the backyard at our fire pit and enjoy Wisconsin. I sleep like a champ with my fat cat Montee Ball and start it all over the next day.
What’s the biggest item on your to-do list right now?
Professionally, it’s to upgrade and improve our legacy stores to the latest brand standard. We have been remodeling and upgrading a few stores each year. Reinvesting in our pipeline and upgrading the storefront to our more modern, impactful design is fun.
I am trying to learn to relax a little more and not feel like I must always be moving, doing, going or building. To be honest, I’m kind of failing at the relaxing part.
Currently, I’m on a board for the Children’s Museum of Rock County and part of a capital campaign to raise $10 million to build a new Children’s Museum here in Janesville. I am also learning how to create a foundation.
We just started a CMRC Foundation, Inc. for when we are ready to build. I took on the role of president, so now I’m learning about filings, Articles of Incorporation, bylaws, audits and Robert’s Rules of Order.
What was the best advice you ever received?
As a young mother, I chose my kids over a growing career. I left at a high point while working for a great company. I was sad to go, but we were struggling as a family. A former boss told me I would never regret it.
And I haven’t. I was a little confused about who I was without a job and two kids in tow, but I soon learned there is so much more to me than work, and I learned to slow down and enjoy my time with my kids. I even slept in until 7 a.m. on occasion.
What’s the best thing a customer ever said to you?
I will cheat and say the best thing a contractor told me. I had this little spitfire of a foreman for a contractor about 4’10” and exceptional at her job. I finally told the company to stop sending the project manager to check up on her because this gal could take care of it all on her own.
We worked together seamlessly for six years when I was at Kohl’s. Many years later, she thanked me for giving her a chance. She had not seen herself as management material.
At the time, it was a little selfish of me; I didn’t want my time wasted, and she was capable, but I also knew that I was pushing her into a role that her own company did not see her in. They let me have my way since I worked for such a big company. She is now a project manager for another large company in Milwaukee, and it makes me feel good that I made a positive difference in her life.
