As home building begins to rebound after a five-year slide, the National Hardware Show is celebrating with an expanded Building Products category that calls out exhibitors with special signage to make them easy to pick out on the show floor. Among those scheduled to represent this enhanced category are GRK Fasteners, Louisville Ladder, CoverGrip Corporation and Dumond Chemicals, and pro dealers planning to attend include Gahahl Lumber and BMC.

Springfield, Mass.-based Rocky’s Ace Hardware appointed Bill Madormo to the post of VP operations for the 33-store chain. 

Hyphen Solutions has appointed Ken Pinto, a former supply chain executive for Toll Bros. and other national home builders, as its VP supply chain. Pinto brings 21 years of supply chain management expertise to Hyphen's real estate and software management team. He most recently served as the director of supply chain at Toll Bros. and has held similar positions at Standard Pacific and Pulte Homes. Pinto also heads the Supply Chain Benchmark Group, which is a coalition of the purchasing leaders of some of the largest home builders in the United States.

Springfield, Mass.-based Rocky’s Ace Hardware promoted Karen Gravelin to the position of VP corporate administration.

Gravelin, 56, joined Rocky’s Ace Hardware in September 2011 as director of human resources. In her new role, Gravelin will be responsible for information technology, organizational development and training in addition to human resources, payroll and benefits.

Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Sears Holdings Corp. has added Paul G. DePodesta to its board of directors.

DePodesta is currently VP player development and amateur scouting for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball, but he is more famous as the young, forward-thinking, statistics-obsessed Oakland A's executive upon whom the Jonah Hill character was partially based in the recent movie "Moneyball."

Bad weather has meant brisk business for the industry’s largest home improvement retailers, which for the second year in a row experienced significant sales gains from an East Coast hurricane.

Fourteen months after Hurricane Irene wreaked havoc on the Northeast, Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast, particularly New Jersey and southeast New York, where damage totals continue to rise well into the tens of billions of dollars.