Window Displays Draw Attention to Main Street Ace Hardware

There’s a colony of PVC people living in the windows of Main Street Ace Hardware. The store, in the heart of downtown Bowling Green, Ohio, has large windows that face the street. Staff use items commonly found around the hardware store to keep the area decorated.

“We’re on one of the busiest pedestrian streets, so we put these windows to good use,” says sales associate
Kevin Pierce. “We create displays that acknowledge seasonal changes or promote downtown events and holidays.”

For example, during the Black Swamp Arts Festival, the largest downtown event of the year, passersby can see artwork by employees and other local artists. Around Thanksgiving, there’s a holiday table decorated with hardware-inspired accessories, such as candles made from toilet floats.

But one of the most popular recurring themes of the window displays is a colony of stick figures created with PVC pipe. “Occasionally our displays show one of our PVC people ‘on the job,’” Pierce says. “One window in particular was changing every couple of days to show how to install a toilet.”

In another instance, when the local college football team was playing a rival team, the window display included a kicker, cheerleaders and goalposts, all made of PVC.