Career castaways find a new home in hardware - group of new hardware store owners - Industry Overview - Brief Article

Home Channel News, July 2, 2001 by Mari Georgeson

Retail life appeals despite competitive business environment

NATIONAL REPORT -- What could an Illinois engineer, a Colorado lawyer, a Washington supermarket mogul and a Texas millionaire possibly have in common?

While that might sound like the crew of castaways from Gilligan's Island, it's actually a group of new hardware store owners.

While many in the industry are struggling to make ends meet in an increasingly competitive business environment, these four decided to open up hardware stores -- which raises the obvious question: What were they thinking?

Meet Tim Gale. Gale bought Algonquin True Value from its previous owner in November 1999. Located not far from Hoffman Estates, the suburb of Chicago where Gale lives, Algonquin is a quaint "village" of some 22,000 residents. In his previous incarnation, Gale was a telecommunications engineer and worked at Alltel designing cell sites for six years. "I knew I didn't want to do that forever," Gale explained, adding that he had always dreamed of having a job that he "wouldn't mind .going to" every morning. A hardware store was perfect for him, since he had worked in hardware stores throughout school and had always run a carpentry business on the side.

There were other reasons as well. Tim wanted a job where he could have more flexible hours to spend with his baby daughter, who is currently nine months old. The real catalyst, though, was when Alltel closed its Chicago office and moved to Little Rock. Tim decided he wouldn't follow.

For Lisa Clay the jump to the hardware industry meant her life got more hectic. As if being a busy mother of three and general counsel at her family's industrial construction company wasn't enough, three years ago Clay and her husband Jim decided to open Windsor Ace, in Windsor, Cob. Clay, who is still in-house counsel at the family firm, is the more "hands-on" partner of the two; she spends 15 to 20 hours per week at the store, while he still works full time as a divisional vp at the family company. Clay said that when her husband does spend time in the store, he is "in hog heaven" with all the hardware and power tools. But unlike her husband, and unlike Tim Gale, Clay has no inherent love for nuts and bolts. "I'm lucky, I haven't had to learn the nitty gritty," she said. "I have a really good management team." What she likes most about her job is being out on the floor helping customers. "It's a neat way to work with the public. Ninety-five percent of them are gracious to work with."

Ken Hubbard Jr., on the other hand, loves nuts and bolts. Before he and his father opened Hubbard & Sons Hardware in March in Whitewright -- a Northeast Texas town of 5,500 whose local paper publishes its eighth-graders' class pictures -- he worked for 23 years in industrial sales at Automated Products Corp., selling, well, nuts and bolts. His excursion into the hardware business, however, isn't his first exposure to the world of retail. The Hubbard family also runs a restaurant, a bakery, a dress shop, a garden shop, a movie theater, a photo studio and a doll shop.

The hardware store, however, is the only business where Hubbard is a hands-on manager.

The family decided to open up a hardware store because the town needed it. Meadors Implements, the farm equipment and hardware store that used to occupy the site of Hubbard & Sons, went out of business three years ago. The town was left with only a small, one-room hardware store operation.

In a day and age where there seems to be a Home Depot and Lowe's on every block, and 30 percent of Home Depot's 2000-plus stores are eating into their own sales, never mind the sales of independent dealers, it might seem odd that some places still have a need for more hardware. But that seems to be a common theme among new hardware-store dealers. Lisa Clay said she and her husband were originally looking at opening their business in Wellington Cob., but Ace told them that there was a need in Windsor, and the store would be more successful there. So they built it from the ground up.

Gordy Gaub was minding his own business, running supermarkets in Washington. Then the local hardware store went out of business in North Bend. It hadn't been closed for thirty days before Gaub called his friend, Carl Roy, who was working at an Eagle in another town, and proposed the idea of opening a hardware store. Within 60 days, the pair had opened North Bend Ace.

"Supermarket people work fast," said Roy. The pair initially opened their 3,800-square-foot "store" inside a drugstore Gaub owned at the time. That was three years ago. Last September, the store moved to a free-standing location -- one of Gaub's old supermarkets. Gaub owns the 23,000-square-foot location while Roy runs it.

"It's a hardware store plus," said Roy, who explained that the store offers every category that's not already served by a retail business in town, including sporting goods, a phone center, pet supplies and even a pet groomer where a deli used to be. The pair seems to have a pretty good pulse on what sells in the community. When asked how he determines what will sell and what won't, Roy responded, 'I've lived here for 30 years."