Former Kimball ShopKo to Become Ace Hardware with a Farm and Ranch Focus

Former Kimball ShopKo to Become Ace Hardware with a Farm and Ranch Focus
Former ShopKo Hometown store in Kimball now under development by Jeffrey Lepp and his wife, Kim (Murphy/KNEB/RRN)
April 19th, 2021 | Scott Miller

The new owners for the former ShopKo Hometown building in Kimball say it will become an Ace Hardware store, but hardware will be just one of many lines carried by the business.

Jeffrey Zepp and his wife Kim, who own Specialty Sports and Supply in Colorado Springs and have an Ace Hardware in Chadron, purchased the building in February.

Zepp told KNEB News it will be unlike any other store in the city, with a heavy focus on farm and ranch supplies. “There will be other sub-categories that will be added in that aren’t in the other one, apparel will be added into this. In the (store) in Chadron, we do operate a very sound sporting goods department, actually a quite impressive one,” said Lepp. “We will do a much-more expanded sporting goods department in the Kimball location, and part of that will be a fairly large gun shop, with products in shooting, hunting, fishing and camping.” He says there will be many other specialty sets that will go into the store as well.

However, Zepp says he won’t likely be able to open the store until August at the earliest. He says the plan was to open before that, but a number of vendors are facing logistical delays, perhaps the most pressing of which is that store shelving is on back-order for 120 days.

Zepp says he and his wife are very fond of the region, especially the people who live here, and a part of a longer-range plan is to move into the area to a ranch they own in the Panhandle.

He says he sees the new store as a sort of ‘flagship’ operation that would provide a template for any potential new stores that may follow.

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