Thanks to a neverending home renovation teardown in San Diego, along with a newborn son on the way next month, my wife, daughter, and I are staying in Ohio for the next several months to be near family.
If you live anywhere near where I am now, you already know about a store called Menards. The jingle is probably permanently welded to your brain.
If you’ve never heard of Menards, it’s basically a Home Depot/Lowe’s competitor in the Midwest.
There are 341 of them, and the sole owner, John Menard Jr, is an 85 year old man worth just shy of $20 billion, ranked #128 on the Forbes List, and the richest man in Wisconsin.
Menards has captivated me since my Ohio arrival because my mom and stepdad go there all the time. I’m pretty sure they go there every day.
They’re devout Christians, and I am fairly certain they believe that after they die they go to Menards.
After hearing about this place repeatedly as if it’s the son my mother never had, I had to go figure out why they’re so obsessed.
I needed to know…
What makes this place so incredible that a 70 year old woman is fiercely loyal? How does it manage to not only survive but thrive with Home Depot and Lowe’s around?
After doing a deep dive for the better part of the whole day, it became clear how this company was able to become a $13 billion per year juggernaut with a loyal customer base.
I assume none of you are eager to start a home improvement store, but what you’ll learn from Menards is valuable to any business.
After all, if you ever want ideas to improve your own business, just dissect one that has unrivaled loyalty.
What, on the surface, might just look like “another big home improvement chain” is actually a very carefully crafted strategy that starts before you even step inside the store.
First, the Menards ad strategy is quietly brilliant.
Of everything Menards does, this is my favorite: they still buy monstrous multi-page advertisements in local print newspapers.
What I don’t see, at least in the local newspaper here, are ads for Lowe’s or Home Improvement.
Media buyers at large corporations are just normal human beings, oftentimes younger ones. So, they skew toward buying ads on cooler, digital platforms, assuming nobody uses less sexy ones anymore.
I’ve seen this so many times, and it creates a massive opportunity. For example, from 2010 to 2016, when email was declared dead by just about every large media publisher, I was amassing subscribers by the hundreds of thousands for literal pennies each.
But let’s get back to the Menards print advertisement though. It has two key components to notice.
1. They’re subtly humanized.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you probably know I have consistently worked inspirational quotes into pretty much all of my sites.
They’re easy to add, there’s zero downside, and it creates a subconscious positive connotation with your brand.
The small human touch, the extra personalized detail… I can’t stress enough how important they are to the consumer, even if they don’t consciously realize it. These small things truly differentiate your business, especially as we enter an AI era where everything feels the same.
2. Print ad readers are more targeted than ever.
Something I love about a forgotten medium is that those still using it are much higher quality than something that’s mainstream.
Granted, someone older in age who still gets a newspaper thrown through their window by the kid in Paperboy may not be your target audience, but, if it is, it’s more powerful than ever. You can bet this person is probably not busy, will consume the entire newspaper, and remember the brand that consistently shows up on multiple pages.
The Takeaway: Never sell any medium short. In fact, you should start paying attention to the ones nobody in the industry is talking about. If everyone’s talking about a platform working really well, then you’re probably too late and the saturation has already begun.
And add personal touches! You might have a business, but your customers are human. Humans appreciate humans, especially when they’re a positive light in their lives, even if it’s just a small gesture.
Second, the inside of the store is larger than life.
Walking into a store is the same as landing on a website. You expect three things:
1. You expect it to be easy to find what you’re looking for
While Home Depot obviously does many things incredibly well, I’m going to use my experiences there as an example.
I can never find what I’m looking for. As someone who is not particularly handy when it comes to physical items, I just don’t have a mental category system to know where household items will probably be.
When I went to Menards, this problem was clearly solved because they plaster gigantic labels in 50,000pt font above every aisle like the Batman symbol in the sky.
It’s amazing.
At any point, I can literally just turn my head and spot where something is because it’s impossible not to see from virtually any vantage point in the store. I didn’t check the bathrooms, but I assume there’s a huge green “Toilet” sign in the stall.
Not only does it address making it easy to find what you’re looking for, but each label serves as an internal advertisement for other sections.
It’s the equivalent to making sure users can find other important pages or products on your website.
2. You expect it to be neat and clean
Unlike Lowe’s and Home Depot, Menards is bright and happy. It’s also absolutely enormous.
The average Home Depot is 105,000 square feet. Menards stores are as large as 250,000 square feet. That’s not because Menards necessarily has more stuff; it’s a deliberate design choice.
They’ve created a Disney World-like experience that gives customers a feeling of endless exploration combined with easy navigation.
Plus, they can sell things that actually do feel like you’re at an amusement park, like these skeletons taller than my house:
And now that Christmas season has begun, they have an entire area set up with music, Christmas trees, lights, and all the merriest of things.
You feel like you’re having an experience, not looking to replace the 1/8th inch drill bit you lost.
3. You expect it to be easy to consume what you’re looking for
Menards doesn’t have a self-checkout, and you don’t even unload your own items. You literally just roll your cart up and walk through while the frail 88 year old clerk lifts and scans all of your heavy equipment.
Aside from feeling guilt and shame, you don’t have to do anything at all. There are nearly infinite tools to fine-tune your checkout process on a website, yet somehow it’s still an underrated moment.
The very first and very last experience someone has with your business (or you!) are the most important.
My Takeaway: If Menards were a website, the UX would get a 10/10. It’s a huge, clean experience that makes it easy to get exactly what you want while discovering more things you didn’t even know you wanted in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive.
Even watching the customers compared to the ones at Home Depot, it felt different. At Home Depot, it’s all about getting the customer to the product as fast as possible, which is why their associates meet you at the door. At Menards, people are just wandering around, trying out patio furniture, experiencing a mini-Christmas and following the big, green signs without a care in the world. This is their happy place.
Third, the 11% rebate is evil genius.
Everything at Menards is 11% off. Kinda.
It’s quite possibly the most important part of their strategy, which is why it’s at the top of every advertisement and, in typical Menards fashion, plastered right across the front of their store.
Simply put, it works like this: after purchasing just about anything, your receipt contains a code that you write down on a physical card and send in the mail. A few weeks later, the rebate coupon is mailed to you.
At first glance, it might feel like a typical discount. But it’s not… it’s a psychological masterclass in driving business.
- Choosing 11% instead of 5, 10, or 15 stands out in the human mind. Half of you reading this probably notice 11:11 on the clock every day.
- When you have to physically send it in, a lot of people won’t. Effectively, Menards gets the marketing benefit of a discount without giving the discount in many cases.
- People like my mom LOVE sending it in. It’s nostalgic for her. I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out if you can do it online (you can’t) all the while I’ve never seen her happier showing me how to do it the right way.
- When you do get your rebate, since you have to use it at Menards, you just end up buying more stuff there you wouldn’t have bought before.
Kinda like this guitar I bought for my daughter while wandering around taking photos:
I look forward to sending this in and waiting 4-6 weeks for that sweet $1.10. How much is a stamp in 2025?
But honestly – the 11% rebate really is a simple, yet ridiculously effective, strategy. It’s completely legal, borderline ethical, and deeply psychological.
Like it or not, that’s often the cornerstone of multi-billion dollar companies.
My Takeaway: Discounts are obviously nothing new, but this is probably the most underrated strategy I’ve seen. Math doesn’t resonate well with most people, so this psychological savings trigger keeps people coming back over and over. And don’t forget – people actually love receiving something in the mail. It’s not unlike people who can’t wait for that tax refund, choosing to remain completely oblivious to the fact all they did was gave the government a free loan.
If your business offers discounts, experiment with unique strategies like this one. Just slapping “10% off for a limited time” is barely even white noise now. Think outside the box. Maybe even send users something physical (seriously).
And last, Menards has stayed true to its core.
In order to get the perspective of the everyday home improvement store-goer, I had to turn to Facebook where this core demographic enjoys giving oddly strong opinions on arbitrary topics all the while sharing AI slop of 500 pound creatures at the airport that simply do not exist.
But, while there, I learned something very clear about Menards.
They’ve got some killer lumber.
Every single debate about whether Menards or Home Depot is better, person after person stated that Menards is leagues above the rest when it comes to lumber.
And this makes sense considering our protagonist, John Menard Jr, actually started Menards as Menard Cashway Lumber.
I didn’t make it to the lumberyard to take a photo due to exhaustion from the 3 miles of floorspace I had already covered, but here’s what they do better than Lowe’s and Home Depot according to my new Facebook friends:
- Much better variety of wood
- The lumber area is a separate, outside area with enough space to literally turn a semi around
That’s it, but it’s important.
At Lowe’s, you load your cart with lumber directly in the store, then have to navigate the rest of your shopping experience like the last few seconds of a game of Tetris, knocking over kids and buckets.
At Menards, you just drive up and someone helps you.
My Takeaway: What Menards has done so brilliantly is expand on their original product, lumber, without losing its attention to detail. Giving customers a clear, indisputable reason to use your business opens up so many opportunities to connect with them in other ways. Offering too much, without any specialty, gives nobody any reason to visit you.
Focusing in on delivering value so undeniably better than everyone else in a single category, then finding complementary ways to expand, is how empires are built.
Also, if your business is established, read what people are saying on social media and in reviews. Don’t treat them as anxiety fuel; treat them as huge opportunities to do better. I learned so much about Menards just by reading customers’ conversations.
Honorably mentioned: Ray Szmanda
It would be criminal to not mention the decadeslong spokesman for Menards, Ray Szmanda.
He was a staple of the brand, full of positivity, and created the best website I’ve ever seen.
Unfortunately, Ray didn’t secure his site before his passing in 2018, so I can’t link it. But check it out… what a legend.
Wrapping Up The Menards Empire
I contemplated whether to write this because it might seem strange to tell a bunch of digital entrepreneurs and marketers about a brick and mortar home improvement chain.
But, as I’ve said many times, business is business. I often get ideas from industries that are completely different than the one I’m in.
It’s a somewhat strange, almost automatic habit of mine to look at every storefront, product packaging, or even website through the lens of what they’re doing well and where they’re falling short.
Seeing missed opportunities pains me. But every single business has them… lots of them.
The power of continuous optimization, every single day, is what takes a business from nothing to successful and from successful to an empire.
