Lexington hardware stores take a financial hit from mild winter weather
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Regardless of the size of the store, its location or the name on the sign out front, nobody associated with the hardware business in the Lexington area went unaffected by this past winter’s docile weather. Warmer-than-average temperatures and a lack of significant precipitation delivered a hit to the industry as a whole, with the only difference across the board being how well each individual business absorbed the blow.
For the kings of the big-box hardware stores — Lowe’s and Home Depot — that meant making up for the loss of business by selling more high-priced items and reeling in customers eyeing large projects. The mom-and-pop hardware dealers, however, don’t have that luxury. Often, the best those shops can hope for is to cut their losses and trust the next season won’t be as harmful.
“You lose money and you go on,” said Bill Edwards, owner of Chevy Chase Hardware. “We probably lost $20,000 this winter.”
Edwards is like anyone else in the hardware business. He points out that hardware is the ultimate seasonal business, with most projects big and small being tackled from spring to fall. And while Edwards’ corporate competitors operate on a larger scale, the unseasonable weather caused them to experience losses in much of the same fashion as the smaller stores. Like Edwards, the big boys as well as other local stores remain inundated with supplies of winter weather staples such as ice melt, snow shovels and weather stripping. Sales in electric heaters were down (Edwards, who has been in the hardware business for 35 years, said he sold a personal all-time low), and even supplemental items such as sleds remain unsold.
“It’s kind of funny, but the most we hope for is to not lose money during winter,” Edwards said. “If we have some good season weather and some snow and cold, we’ll sell enough of these [winter] products to hold our own and make the bulk of our money in spring through the fall. Of course, what happens during the winter time is you lose all the lawn and garden, the house repairs, the painting and all that kind of stuff. But it’s kind of offset by the snow. We had all that really crazy warm weather in March, and that helped a little, but it was just an early season and just helped crank the cash flow a bit earlier. But I don’t think overall we’re gonna make up for that winter.”
Count the Ace Hardware store at Tates Creek Centre among those that can’t rebound.
The last store of that franchise in Lexington will be shutting its doors in the near future, though a definitive date has yet to be announced. Connie McKinney, the store’s manager, said the business “just didn’t have enough sales” and attributed the mild winter to playing a role in the owners’ decision (Frank Manno and Ron Manno of Florida) to shut the doors. The entirety of its remaining inventory has been reduced to 70 percent off, and that price point will remain at least that low until everything is gone.
That won’t be the case with the likes of Lowe’s and Home Depot, however. Those entities deal in significant volume and enjoy such brand recognition that they’re more able to make up some losses.
For example, Jim Householder, manager of the Richmond Road Home Depot, said his store took a dip in sales by an estimated 10 percent. Obviously, the majority of that comes from not moving the traditional anti-winter weather products, such as heating elements and shovels, though it also included sealant and other products that repair or prevent things such as roof damage. He said some of those losses were made up in sales for pesticides and lawn-care products that eliminate pests that normally perish in the winter.
And unlike the smaller stores, he’s confident things will at least even out when spring gets on a full roll.
“It’s hard for a normal hardware store,” Householder said. “I can gain a lot of my losses back due to the building business and the real estate business coming back. It’s tough for the small stores, because they don’t have large-ticket items they can gain back on. I lose a season, I can try to recover some of it back with larger jobs like building homes, redoing apartment complexes and things like that. A smaller store — they lose a season, they lose a season. They can’t really recoup the business.”
Edwards has accepted that reality and continues to go about his business as he has for four decades. He said as a neighborhood store, he’ll continue to service the community in the same fashion he always has, doing everything from selling air filters to repairing lamps. And Edwards will prepare for next winter, expecting it to be as it should — cold, wet and nasty — though with a surplus of supplies remaining from this past winter.
That is, unless he can unexpectedly unload some of it in the meantime.
“If you want a real deal on ice melt,” Edwards joked, “I’ve got about three tons of it sitting out here.”