2026 Beacon Awards: Still Looking for What’s Next

Retail Beacon Awards recipient Bill Gilbert marks six decades growing Gilbert’s Hardware & Appliance in Owosso, Michigan, and beyond.

Gilbert started working in his parents’ 20-foot-wide Western Auto store when he was 11 years old. Six decades later, the business bears little resemblance to the place where he cut up boxes, stocked merchandise and handled freight after school and on weekends. Gilbert’s has expanded into new categories, added another location and repeatedly remodeled and reinvested as customers and retailing changed around it.

At 72, Gilbert is still asking what comes next.

Even as he makes plans to attend the Do it Best Fall Market in Indianapolis, Gilbert intends to arrive early to catch a vendor refresher class. He figures he can still learn something.

Constant curiosity and a steady instinct to do better help explain how he has authored a standout retail career spanning nearly 60 years.

“I think I’ve missed only one market in my 55 years in the hardware business, and I’ve always been amazed at the number of truly great hardware stores out there,” Gilbert says. “It’s humbling and amazing to receive the Beacon Award.”

Same Service, Every Customer

Gilbert grew up inside the business his parents, Chuck and Mary Ann Gilbert, opened in Owosso, Michigan, in 1965. He learned early what his father expected when a customer walked through the door.

“My dad didn’t care about the class of a customer or what they were buying,” he says. “[Whether] someone came in for just a nut or bolt, a deep freezer or a bicycle, it was the same service. We give everybody that personal attention.”

Bill became an owner in 1976. Three years later, the family began shifting its general-store assortment toward hardware and joined True Value. Bill and brother K.C. Gilbert would work together as partners for four decades, a relationship Bill credits for much of the company’s growth.

Gilbert’s kept evolving. A second location opened in 2006 in the town of DeWitt. Shortly after came the global financial crisis and a difficult Michigan economy that lasted through 2010. In 2012, Gilbert’s made another significant move when it joined Do it Best.

Today, the company employs some 45 people, about 80% of whom are full-time. Gilbert acknowledges that his staffing model may seem old-fashioned, but it promotes the knowledgeable personal service he wants customers to receive.

It also puts a responsibility on the owner to demonstrate what such service looks like.

“As an owner, all eyes are on you,” he says. “Your mentorship is constant.”

That can mean picking something up off the floor when it needs to be picked up, stepping into a job when an employee needs help or bringing managers and ownership staff to industry markets so they can continue to develop their skills.

One measure of whether his tactics work comes directly from customers. Gilbert takes particular pride when shoppers tell him his store is among the nicest, best-maintained hardware operations they’ve been to. Having grown up learning and adhering to his father’s expectations, he now sees his own employees carrying them forward.

Giving Customers a Reason to Return

Six decades in the business have only strengthened Gilbert’s appetite for change.

A major renovation of the Owosso store was completed in 2022, adding 2,000 square feet of retail space, new endcaps and an attached 3,800-square-foot glass garden center. Lawn and garden sales increased 60%, while the additional space enabled Gilbert’s to strengthen plumbing, cleaning, tools, electrical and other departments.

The DeWitt store followed with an interior and exterior remodel in 2023. Expanded lawn and garden and outdoor-living assortments helped those become destination categories, while the store built its outdoor power equipment offering across cordless and gas products. Sales increased 20% following the renovation and have kept growing.

“Customers want to be given a reason to frequent your store,” Gilbert says. “Whether it’s a remodel as drastic as adding a garden center or adding a dominant department of something you hadn’t previously been selling, every hardware store [owner] needs to examine what they can do.”

Gilbert uses sales data to help make those decisions. Departments can be developed at basic, expanded or dominant levels, depending on the opportunity. And when an expansion doesn’t perform as expected, he’s willing to reverse course.

His willingness to experiment also led to the development of Gilbert’s Scratch & Dent Center.

Appliance retail inevitably generates damaged merchandise through shipping, warehousing and installation. Gilbert purchased a former wheel-alignment and repair facility initially for warehouse space, then had an idea. He transformed the building into a dedicated outlet for scratched and dented appliances, supported by full-time technicians who test merchandise before Gilbert’s sells it.

The concept builds on a category Gilbert’s has developed since adding major appliances in 1980. Today the operation can sell, service, install and, in many cases, quickly deliver appliances. The capability has become strong enough that customers seeking immediate solutions have been referred to Gilbert’s by a nearby big-box retailer. Specialization and service, he says, are reliable ways for an independent hardware retailer to give customers another reason to patronize a local business.

Community on Both Sides of the Counter

Gilbert’s relationship with Owosso extends throughout its central Michigan community.

The Gilbert family has been involved with downtown development efforts since the 1980s; Bill himself has served on the YMCA board since late that decade. His involvement has included work on a capital campaign supporting a childcare center and expansion.

Community service, he says, is a natural extension of the support his family has received for generations.

“The community has given us so much,” he says. “It’s our job to give back.”

That relationship works every day on a smaller, more personal scale, too. Gilbert was leaving the store after closing one night not long ago when he encountered longtime customer Alice Williams, who needed fertilizer. Gilbert reopened the garden center and began talking with her about what she was trying to accomplish.

He learned that she had been spreading fertilizer across her yard by hand. He found a small hand spreader, showed her how to use it and spent some time talking her through the particulars of the job. It was hardly the biggest transaction of his week—and that was precisely the point.

“If your heart doesn’t get twice the size…” he says of those kinds of encounters. “That really fires me up.”

Moments like that happen two or three times a week. He also gets satisfaction from watching employees develop and seeing another generation prepare to carry the company into the future. His daughter, Cate Gilbert, is now an owner as well; she’s positioned to keep the business going when Gilbert eventually retires.

Eventually being the operative word.

Accepting the Retail Beacon Award, Gilbert spoke about the numerous retailers he has encountered during his 55 years of attending industry markets and credited his family, employees and business partners—and his wife, Debbie—for making his career possible. The recognition, he says, was truly humbling.

“There are so many dealers and people out there who deserve this award,” he says. “I’m very grateful.”

The honor didn’t represent a finish line—far from it. Gilbert still has those education sessions at the Do it Best Market to attend.

After six decades, he can point to plenty of reasons to keep learning, investing and improving. But the best reason might also be the simplest, he says: “I still have fun coming to work.”