Kids interrupting your DIY home improvements? Ace Hardware will help get you a sitter

Ace Hardware wants you to stop blaming your kids for not giving you time to paint over the ugly mustard yellow bathroom walls.

So the hardware and paint retailer has come up with a solution. It’s paying for a babysitting search service for customers who need it to get their DIY home painting done.

Ace announced Thursday it will offer Ace Rewards members — customers enrolled in its loyalty program — a one-month paid subscription to babysitting search service Sittercity.

Just to be clear, the retailer is only picking up the $35 one-month subscription cost to access Sittercity. It will not cover the sitter’s fee as well. Ace Hardware said the offer kicked off Thursday and lasts until April 3rd.

The idea for the unusual incentive stemmed from a survey that Ace commissioned in February of 1,008 DIY painters. It showed that 84% wanted to paint a room in their home yet over half (52%) had set no target start date.

And 14% of respondents who are parents blamed lack of childcare as the reason for procrastinating on a paint job.

While the pandemic actually spurred paint purchases — the company said its overall paint sales were up 30% in 2020 over the previous year — “we know that consumers were procrastinating on starting the paint projects. So we wanted to help with one of their pain points,” said Kim Lefko, chief marketing officer of Ace Hardware, which has over 4,500 locations in the United States.

Depending on how customers respond to it, Lefko said Ace Hardware might think about making it an annual perk. “We realize paint procrastination is real,” said Lefko.