Hutchinson’s Orscheln Farm and Home Store is now Bomgaars.
However, store visitors won’t immediately notice any difference.
The family-owned retail farm and ranch supply chain headquartered in Sioux City, Iowa, acquired the location at 1500 E. 11th Ave., north of the Uptown Mall, as part of a divestiture agreement approved by the Federal Trade Commission last week related to the sale of the Orscheln company to Tractor Supply Co.
It is one of 73 stores Bomgaars has acquired, including 21 in Kansas. Other locations in the area include Salina, Newton, McPherson, Pratt, Great Bend, Garden City, Dodge City, and Hays.
Another 16 Orscheln stores in Kansas will convert to Tractor Supply locations.
The new owner has retained all of the former Orscheln employees, said Heather Korbe, marketing director with Bomgaars, with no immediate plans for change.
The plan is to transition the stores over the next 12 to 15 months,” Korbe said.
That includes rebranding the store and changing its layout to reflect how Bomgaars operates.
“We don’t have a date when Hutchinson is on that list,” she said. “It will be one of the earlier stores, but it won’t be until early next spring.”
With the sale just occurring, the company is still figuring out how things will work, Korbe said, including when and how to change signs on the building.
“But it is a Bomgaars store now,” she said.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on having what you need when you need it,” she said. “That’s something we were founded on and truly believe. We want to deliver products our customers need at the right price and to have them on hand when you need them. We’ve got a lot of great vendors and suppliers.”
The company has four merchandise “pillars” it focuses on, Korbe said, including Dewalt tools, lawn and garden and other seasonal outdoor products, animal food for pets and livestock, and footwear.
“We have more than those four, but those four we really strive to have a good assortment and equipment,” she said.During its transition over the next year, as Orscheln stocks need replenishing, Bomgaars will bring in its products to replace them.
“Our pricing is generally pretty similar,” she said. “You’d have to look item to item to compare, but it’s generally similar. We plan to deliver the best prices on the products we sell to our customers.”
Bomgaars, operated by the Bomgaars family, serves the Midwest, High Plains and the Rockies with stores in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and Kansas, according to its website.
The 70-year-old company has had a presence in Kansas since 2020, Korbe said, and before last week’s action, its stores were in Lyons, Hillsboro, Russell, Beloit, Burlington, Norton and Seneca.
On Feb. 17, 2021, Tractor Supply and Orscheln entered an agreement for Tractor Supply to acquire the smaller company for approximately $320 million.
However, the FTC, concerned about competition in communities with both Orscheln and Tractor Supply stores, ordered Tractor Supply to divest those dual store locations in 10 states.
Bomgaars was one of two farm retailers selected to purchase stores during a lengthy bidding process. Buchheit Enterprises Inc. of Illinois acquired 12 locations.
In addition, Tractor Supply agreed to sell the Orscheln corporate headquarters and a distribution center in Moberly, Missouri, to Bomgaars for approximately $10 million within 15 months after the close of the transaction, according to an earlier Tractor Supply release.
The sale resulted in Bomgaars growing by nearly 70% overnight, going from 107 stores to 180, Korbe said.
That makes it the second largest farm store chain in the nation, behind Tractor Supply, which operates more than 2,000 farm stores in every state except Alaska. Orscheln used to be number two.
“We’ve always prided ourselves in being a company that liked to grow by opportunity,” Korbe said. “When the opportunity presented itself to go into new consumer markets, we looked at it.”
“This one came up when Tractor Supply announced the purchase of Orscheln, and then the FTC stepped in and told them they need to look for buyers in several markets.”
“A lot of behind-the-scenes stuff was happening, with a number of other companies talking about it and what it would look like and bidding on stores,” she said. “I can’t go into full details, but we were very happy to be part of the consolidation process and to have this opportunity to grow and expand and to move into new markets. We look forward to meeting our new customers in these markets as well.”
She expects the Hutchinson store, and others in Kansas, will host grand openings sometime in the future, but “the scale and timing of that are yet to be determined.”
The divestiture order also contains a 10-year “prior approval” provision related to the buyers. It prohibits them from selling acquired stores for three years except to an acquirer that receives the prior approval of the FTC. And then, for the next seven years, buyers are required to get prior Commission approval to sell their acquired store to a buyer with another farm store within 60 miles.
The Hutchinson location was built in 2013 for Orscheln Farm and Home. The property is owned by Christian Ablah and Hutchinson 17th LLC.
Other new Bomgaars locations in Kansas include Atchison, Basehor, Concordia, El Dorado, Gardner, Goddard, Iola, Lawrence, Louisburg, Manhattan, Parsons and Topeka.
The 16 Kansas locations where Orscheln stores will become Tractor Supply stores include Arkansas City, Coffeyville, Colby, Ellsworth, Eureka, Garnett, Goodland, Independence, Junction City, Marysville, Medicine Lodge, Ottawa, Phillipsburg, Sabetha, Smith Center and Wellington.
As reported in The Hutchinson News
