Only the logos remain on the buildings that housed the True Value and Ace hardware stores in southwest suburban Worth and Palos Hills, respectively.
Both closed their doors for good this summer, the latest casualties in the battle between neighborhood hardware stores and big home-center discount chains like Home Depot, Menards and Builders Square.
Before they closed, the owners of both stores, Ken Holmberg of Worth True Value at 7103 W. 111th St. and Barry Murphy of Palos Hills Ace at 11152 Southwest Highway, reported losing at least half of their sales to the superstores. Lacking the purchasing muscle of the big home centers, they said, they just couldn’t compete.
“People today are driven by price,” Murphy said. “When they stop shopping the independents for things other than what they can’t find at the big chains, we go out of business.”
Indeed, Murphy’s and Holmberg’s plight is hardly unique. Altogether, independent hardware stores in the U.S. have seen their share of the estimated $135-billion-a-year home improvement market decline to around 35 percent from 60 percent 10 years ago, according to the National Home Center News, a trade publication.
And each year, independent hardware stores in the U.S.–currently about 22,000 of them–have been closing at the rate of 3 percent, according to the National Retail Hardware Association based in Indianapolis.
In the south and southwest suburbs alone, about a half-dozen stores have closed in Oak Lawn, Chicago Ridge, Worth, Palos Hills and Palos Heights in the last 10 years, according to owners in the area still in business.
If the trend continues, some fear that neighborhood hardware stores will join full-service gasoline stations and mom-and-pop grocery stores on the virtually extinct list.
“We are nearing the end of an era,” Holmberg said when he announced he was closing the store his family had operated in Worth for 47 years.
After World War II, independent hardware stores like Worth True Value and Palos Hills Ace helped support the explosive growth of suburbia.
In addition to the basics–drills, hammers, nails, rakes, paintbrushes and shovels–they supplied many first-time suburban homeowners with some of the non-hardware trappings of suburban living.
But beginning in the 1960s, the non-hardware business was usurped by the suburban arrival of mass merchandisers like Sears, Wal-Mart, Kmart and Montgomery Ward.
And now, many of America’s independent, neighborhood hardware stores are seeing their core business chipped away by the giant home centers, known in the industry as “the big boxes.”
Having established a beachhead in the 1980s, home centers have spread across the suburban landscape. Home Depot, the top chain, today has 500 stores nationally and proposes to increase that number to 1,000 within the next three years.
And, to make matters worse for independents, Hoffman Estates-based Sears, Roebuck and Co. is establishing free-standing hardware stores across the U.S. They number 165, but the retailer plans to increase that to 500 over the next three years.
Some small hardware store owners say that for independents, competing with Sears and the “big boxes” is somewhat akin to a mouse fighting for territorial rights with an elephant.
In addition to price, most independents are at a disadvantage when it comes to offering a wide choice of merchandise, they note. That’s due in great part, they say, to this fact: the home centers average 130,000 square feet; independent operations average about 9,000 square feet.
The independents, however, are not giving up. Many are expanding on their advantage of being conveniently located close to their customers by extending business hours. Some are expanding store space.
And virtually all are putting greater emphasis on the one thing that has always distinguished them from mass merchandisers and super centers–providing customers with knowledgeable assistance in solving home repair and remodeling problems.
“We do a lot of personal service for our customers; that’s how we survive and will continue to survive,” said Howard Hodina, who along with his wife, Virginia, has operated the Ace Hardware Store at 8436 S. Archer Ave. in Willow Springs for the last 44 years.
Indeed, because of the convenience and knowledgeable help that independent hardware stores offer, “there will always be a place for them in the marketplace,” said Philip Abbenhaus, an analyst with the accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick LLP in St. Louis.
In addition, hardware store cooperatives such as Chicago-based True Value and Oak Brook-based Ace (both of which are owned by the hardware store owners who are members) are taking steps to strengthen their buying power and increase efficiency so members can offer more competitive prices.
Whether these efforts will significantly improve the survivability of independent hardware stores remains to be seen.
For Worth True Value and Palos Hills Ace, it’s already too late.
