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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 18:07:10 :
In Reply to: A sign of the times posted by Paul(in NY) [12.64.126.190] on Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 14:24:18 :
In the northwest, Lowes bought out our very good local big-box hardware chain, Eagle Hardware and commenced to slowly ruin it. All the Eagle employees quit except those who were close to being vested in the pension fund. Lowes cut the number of SKUs by half, and scraped the tile off the floor so it would look like a "warehouse". Eagle's motto was "More of Everything". I could get 5/8" fine-thread grade 8 bolts and nuts for my M35 there, or stainless steel sheet metal screws, right out of the bins, in bulk, at good prices. People stared saying that "LOWES" stands for "Less Of What Eagle Sold". Now everybody in America has a Lowes and a Home Depot within a mile of each other in every decent-sized city, all selling the same stuff for the same price.
A good local hardware store is a resource you don't want to lose. Get to know the owner. Open an account. If you're buying a lot of something, give him a chance to match the price of the big-box store. Ours generally will. They may not have room to stock a lot of obscure stuff, but if all they have to do is take it off the freight truck and put it on your truck, and they can make a couple bucks doing so, if they have any business sense at all, they'll do it. Ours beats the big box stores on quality and price of dimensional lumber and is competitive on most other commodity stuff, especially if you figure the cost of driving your truck to the big city for a load of OSB, studs, or cinder blocks. The little odds and ends are expensive, but they must have every Servalite bin known to man and if you have to pay $1 for that O-ring or faucet seat that you need right now, the convenience is worth something.
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