Hardware All Stars Ride Again

How do you become an HBSDealer All Star? Let’s hear from our high-performing class of 2016.



Tony Shepley says there’s no road map. In fact, Shepley Wood Products, which has been a tremendous success in eastern Massachusetts since its founding in 1978, has succeeded in part because it didn’t know what it couldn’t do.



“I like to compare us to the bumble bee,” he said. “Nobody told the bumble bee that he doesn’t have aerodynamics to fly. He just does it anyway.”



Persistence. That’s part of it, but not all of it. All Stars know how to have fun.



Blackhawk Hardware in Charlotte, North Carolina, makes a little joke in its advertising, claiming to be “locally owned (and mismanaged) since 1977.”



“People bring that up in the store all the time,” said Jim Wilkerson, co-owner of the store. “It’s the best promotion we’ve ever done.”



Carolina Millwork & Truss of Andalusia, Alabama, puts it like this: “We can be serious about our work without being serious about ourselves.”



But it’s more than that. You have to be helpful. For instance, when the Washington State University veterinary hospital needed help with the amputated front leg of a 23-pound African turtle, Ace Hardware of Pullman was there to provide the wheel caster and epoxy. Problem solved.



(Note: We’re not making this up.)



All-Star hardware stores are creative. For instance, Murdale True Value of Carbondale, Illinois, promotes itself with a show-stopping, all-staff-on-deck, home-made, in-store music video set to the tune of “If I had a hammer.” They changed the subsequent line to “We’d sell it to a customer.” Though the lip-syncing is a little loose, the store nailed the message: “Hammering out customer delight.” (There’s a link on our website.)



Stores achieve All-Star status by promoting from within, as Logan Hardware of Washington, D.C., did with its current store manager, Joe Tartaglione, who started as a part-time cashier.



They do it through breadth of assortment. Here’s Skagway Hardware of Alaska’s slogan: “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.”



They do it as S.J. Neathawk Lumber does it in West Virginia: “We sell quality building materials at competitive prices with service second to none.”



That about captures it. Then you, too, can be an All Star.