Loss of another local hardware store to chains - American Independent Business Alliance AMIBA

July 29, 2004

Another local store falls to chains

By Rich Lewis

I'd rather write columns than obituaries - but here I am mourning the demise of a local hardware store for the second time in four months.

In April, it was the closing of Handy Hardware off Walnut Bottom Road in South Middleton Township.

Today it is Castles Lumber and Ace Hardware on East Pomfret Street in Carlisle.

I was shocked and disappointed to read in Tuesday's Sentinel that Castles will close its doors for good tomorrow.

Shocked but not surprised. I never believed that Castles could survive the one-two punch of Lowe's, which recently opened just a few blocks away, and Home Depot, which is under construction on South Hanover Street.

Ron Giroux, who owned Handy Hardware, downplayed the role the giant chains played in his decision to close, but Mike Castles is quite clear about what scuttled his store:

"Basically, it was the shrinking of revenues due to the proliferation of the 'big box' retailers - Lowe's and Wal-Mart and Home Depot to come," he told me. "We lost about 10 percent of our business when Wal-Mart opened and then another approximately 20 percent with the opening of Lowe's."

Castles "started to get a little concerned" back in April and "contemplated making some drastic changes." But "given that May through August is typically our big sales period, we decided to just roll the dice and see if we could make it work as it was."

The dice came up snake eyes: "We couldn't do it. The revenues were just not there."

I've been a regular customer at Castles for almost 25 years and was in there just last Saturday to buy three bags of mortar for a backyard project. I will miss the store and its employees. In fact, one recently hired hand was Bill Myers, who had worked at Handy for 20 years before it closed.

Castles had a full line of tools and supplies, but I valued it most for its huge lumber shed, stocked with just about any type of wood you might require. The workers would custom cut boards and sheet goods to any size - and even plane the boards to the thickness you needed - for free. And deliver it all to your house, if necessary.

At Handy, I loved roaming the aisles looking for the unusual devices and doodads that you couldn't find anywhere else. At Castles, my special pleasure was the big bin in the wood shed into which they tossed the leftover ends from cut wood. You could dig through that pile of scraps and take anything you wanted. I would stuff my car full of interesting pieces of pine and oak and other specialty woods - and use them for little hobby projects at home. I never tired of those treasure hunts.

Giroux was upbeat when I asked him whether an independent hardware store could still make it in this town.

Castles also believes "the climate is right for independents here. It's a great community, very loyal." But, they would have to "find a niche and run with it" because trying to be an all-purpose store with the giants looming over you "is a tough nut to crack."

Whether anyone tries to fill the holes left by the closing of Handy and Castles remains to be seen, but it is clear that the community loses something important every time an independent business is driven out by a giant retailer.

"We were able to provide a level of expertise you're not going to find at those kinds of places," Castles says. "And I could get you in and out in five minutes."

Beyond that, "the revenue is going out of town, and they may or may not employ people full time with good benefits."

Local stores, he says, are "citizens of the community" and more deeply rooted than chain stores tend to be.

"You have that personal connection, no question," he says. "If anybody comes in here, I know their name and maybe a little of what's going on in their family. You get a personal service that you might get on a periodic basis at a national retailer, but not on a regular basis."

He points to the support that local businesses give to local charities as an another example of the close relationship that is harder to build "if the person making the decisions is several states away."

His store supported the local United Way, "every fire company," and "every community organization or non-profit that needed us to provide gifts for their fund-raisers."

In fact, when I saw Castles at the store on Saturday, he said, "Hi, Rich" and I replied, "Hi, Slugger." That's because we played together this year (and last) in the annual Summerfair men-versus-women softball game, in which he whacked a few home runs that went about a mile.

That's the kind of community involvement he was talking about.

Sure, I shop at Wal-Mart and Lowe's. In the ideal world, the locals and the nationals would both prosper.

But in small towns like Carlisle, there is only so much money to be spent, and the big stores will likely attract most of it with their huge inventories, low prices and long hours.

Something's got to give, and the fact that the nearest independent hardware stores to Carlisle are now in Newville and Mechanicsburg is sad proof of that.

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