Appealing Hardware

There are 25,000 hardware stores in the U. S. Many are musty and disordered, and because hardware has a masculine tradition, most of them are scornfully undecorated. Yet the National Retail Hardware Association, which has 14.000 members, figures that 80% of all hardware is bought by women.

The prime facts about the U. S. hardware business are: Its 1937 gross sales were $750,000,000. More than half of U. S. hardware stores are in towns with less than 5,000 people. Most hardware stores have been in the same family for two or three generations. Unlike groceries and drugstores they have held out resolutely against the chains. There are more than 10,000 hardware manufacturers in the U. S., but retailers buy most of their stock from 400 wholesalers.

One of the biggest wholesalers is Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co. of Chicago. Its president, Charles John Whipple, has always been distressed by the confused conservatism of hardware retailing. In the last few years he has persuaded 300 of his customers to let him remodel their stores, put their goods out where the customers could see them, make shelves and counters a little more presentable. Last week Mr. Whipple's ideas about retailing culminated in a full-sized, completely outfitted hardware store, set up to the astonishment of the Illinois Retail Hardware Association convention in a display room of Chicago's Hotel Sherman. The 3,000 delegates gaped at the news that not only the stock but the store was FOR SALE.

Its front was yellow, blue and red. Inside, the woodwork was bleached oak. The walls were pastel blue. The goods were displayed on the counters in grocery-store fashion. In the back was a storeroom. The price was $6,500 for the store (which naturally did not include the building), $3,500 for the stock. In two days Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett sold nine stores.

All buyers had to do was sign a check and indicate where they wanted to start business. Mr. Whipple breaks even on the stores, but the buyers are then on terms of such intimacy with him that he thinks they will go on buying their hard ware from Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett. Says he proudly, looking at his stock on his new shelves: "Everything is in easy reach."

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