Do it Best Corp. is a hardware storeretailers' cooperative. It was founded as Hardware Wholesalers, Inc (HWI) in 1945 in Fort Wayne, Indiana by Arnold H. Gerberding along with 75 dealers who would become members and invest $1,000 in exchange for shares of stock in the company. Donald Wolf was CEO during a period of rapid growth. The headquarters of Do It Best Corp. are located in New Haven, Indiana.

 

HWI took its present name in 1998 after a merger between HWI and Our Own Hardware. Today, Do it Best Corp. has over 4,100 members in every state of the USA and in 47 countries, with sales of more than $3 billion (US).

 

Do it Best Corp., formerly known as Hardware Wholesalers, Inc. (HWI), began as the vision of Arnold Gerberding. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1900, Gerberding worked in the hardware business from the time he graduated from high school in 1919. Working as a buyer, he faced many challenges and frustrations getting products at good prices to compete with the popular and rapidly growing catalog and retail chains like Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Montgomery Ward, Inc. 

 

He was always looking for a way to improve his store’s pricing and was impressed by the local farm co-ops. He started investigating this type of idea within the hardware and home improvement industry. He discovered that several regional co-ops had already been established and were experiencing success. In the late 1930s, he immersed himself in developing the concept for a new co-op that would serve independent retailers in the Midwest. Co-ops were based on a simple idea: many stores buying together could get better deals from vendors than if they bought separately. Not only would independent hardware stores become members of the cooperative, they would be the company’s shareholders as well. The profits made by the co-op would be returned to the members as a yearly rebate.