It may all have to do with the business mentality of the community and those that run that run the stores. With in 7 miles of my house are 3 HD's, 1 Lowe's, 1 old fashioned lumber yard, and 1 old fashioned hardware store that I frequent. Since all have opened the oldest, the lumber yard and the hardware store are thriving and enlarging. The Lowe's has become busier and the 3 HD's have become less busy. Maybe the customers in the SW Houston are a smart enough to see the difference. Don't blame the store, blame the community and customers for what flies.
I've never found anywhere near that kind of price differential on the product between the Borg's and other retailers. In a lot of cases, the Borq is like WalMart where the one or two lead items is cheaper but be careful!--a lot of other stuff is at least has high if not higher. If it's 300% cheaper there's only one reason--one is Chinese-imported crap (unless there's a fire-sale closeout or some other very unsupportable condition that's not sustainable in the long run).
As for location, one can only be located in one spot for any given store--if Amurracuns continue to look only at the short term effects of buying cheap imports, that will be all there is and service, if desired will be. It's a choice.
You're in a large enough population area to be moderately well-insulated against the effect. Fortunate for you--you will probably continue to have (at least slightly reduced) choice for the forseeable future. Others is smaller markets such as here know full well the actual consequences.... :(
I can attest that in small, rural areas even a Wally-World and a branch lumber market (Meade Best Buy) effectively drive the locals out, then raise costs above what the locals in the even smaller communities are at...
I agree. The Buffalo area has always been a competitive market. The "mom and pop" hardware stores continue to survive because they have build their business by offering specialized service filling a particular niche. While there have a few local hardware stores close since Home Depot came to town they have closed due to a change in demographics rather than the competition. About the only businesses affected by Home Depot I can think of have been other "mega" stores (Builder's Square and Chase Pitkins come to mind). With the opening of Lowes, from what I've seen so far, unless they get their prices in line with the other stores in the area they are going to have problems. Most people I know are not willing to play their price matching game.
-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)
You're right Duane, it's a choice. I don't think it's a problem here though. There's a class of people who are happy with the cheap stuff or the "convenience" of a big box store, but those are the folks that are now getting exposed to things they were never exposed to before - therefore, they become new members of a community that does things like woodworking or home repairs on their own. As for the folks that kept the local hardware stores alive in the past, or the folks that bought high quality tools intended to last a lifetime, those folks are still out there, and still buying from pretty much the same places they always did. It's a matter of who's money is being spent on quality, and I'd argue that the same types of people who have always spent on quality still are. At the same time, there's a whole new field of people who either have always bought junk because they don't use it alot, or who were never even a part of the food chain in some of these areas, and now are - albeit at the low end.
I don't have enough real numbers to argue hard on the price issues at the moment, but I can argue the imports issues. It's a question of sending money to China by way of North Wilkesboro, NC, or sending money to China by way of Mom & Pop. It's not like the local place only sells American stuff. They sell the same imported crap everybody else does, at higher prices, in packaging with different colors on it.
The only reason I shop there is for their overpriced, marginal quality, but handily available lumber. That's the same justification I've heard lots of folks use for shopping at Lowe's, incidentally. Other than lumber, this place is basically the same as Lowe's, except dark, dusty, dirty, and disorganized. If they have stuff Lowe's doesn't carry, I have no idea where the hell it is in that mess anyway. And as for the help, they're all retired guys who stand around talking about fishing. There can be four of them standing there, and nobody will ever ask me if I need help. If I ask one of them, they play round robin ask Bill ask Ted ask Jimmy and it takes half an hour to find what I'm looking for. This sounds a lot like Lowe's too.
In my immediate area Duane, it's very rural. In the surrounding area (~30miles), Syracuse would be considered a small to medium sized city. It was interesting to watch Wal-Mart come to the local community. There was a faction that was crying doom and gloom. Largely they were led by a local merchant who had held a monopoly in the grocery store space for decades. He had his faction fired up predicting the failure of his store and every other store in the area if Wal-Mart was allowed in. Within days of Wal-Mart opening, his store closed. Really - it was that immediate. Clearly, he wanted the store to close and Wal Mart was only an excuse. He was never competitive in the old days and most people drove 20-30 miles to the bigger regional chains for regular grocery shopping. He was part of a large co-op and his prices were always the highest of the co-op member stores. He could have been more competitive, but didn't want to.
At the time all of the hullabaloo was going on trying to stop Wal-Mart from coming to town, I talked to the owner of the local Ace Hardware. Asked him what his thoughts were on the whole thing. He told me that he went to Ace HQ and asked them what he should do about Wal Mart moving in and if they had anything to offer him to help battle them. To his surprise, they told him that the best thing that could happen to his business is if Wal Mart or Home Depot or whatever moved right in across the street. The fact of the matter is these guys know what impacts their business better than any of us and though it seems logical from one perspective to believe that the big will swallow up the small, it's just not true.
Wal Mart has been in the neighboring town for about 4 years now and only one business closed its doors. That business was the grocery store that I mentioned earlier. Every other pharmacy, hardware store, convenience store, grocery store, you name it, are still here and doing as well as before Wal Mart came to town.
When businesses close it's not because the big guy came to town. They were doing something else wrong for a long time and this was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. I bet if you think back on the opinions of those local merchants you used to know, there was probably more grumbling about price gouging, bad attitudes, etc. way back when, than there were glowing compliments about how much everyone liked shopping there.
Biggest reason to avoid Lowes around here is location.
They are all located in a shopping centers with traffic control patterns designed to insure that "you can't get there from here".
Can't remember the last time I was in one.
It isn't worth the frustration of wasting all that time just to find a place to park, much less stand in line to pay for your purchases after making a selection.
I'll agree with you and raise you this thought. How many of the stores that close were already on the cusp of failure/were failing anyway and have used (insert mega store name here) as the scape goat?
Here in Da Falls we have an Ace Hardware (Neu's). The owner wanted to sell the lot across the street from his store (highway frontage) to Home Depot but the village wouldn't let him onna 'count of access (it would have been a nightmare/no really).
Home Depot did end up opening a mile(ish) away as did also a Menard's. Neu's doesn't open on Sunday and they keep short hours on Tuesday and Thursday. And guess what, all three places are making money.
I was eventually disappointed that Neu's wasn't able to let a Home Depot open across the street just to watch both stay in business but I'm happy with the proximity/it serves to prove a point.
I have heard of local governments working tax advantage deals with a company but I would be shocked if the store gets to keep the states portion of the sales tax collected. Oddly a Sam's Club moved 1 block about 4 years ago. Its new location is on 2 separate city lines. These two cities share the sales tax collected at the store.
Usually when a tax incentive is given to attract a business the local media broadcast the information. "Bass Pro" just signed a deal with the city to open a store in downtown Buffalo and the amount the city is SUPPOSED to kick is was well publicized. I've heard of no incentives given to Lowes.
The City Of Buffalo and The County of Erie (Buffalo is in Erie County) are in major financial trouble. The Erie County executive just tried to push through a 1% increase in county tax which would have raised the combined state/county sales tax to 9.25%, the highest in the country. This was after blowing, IIRC, a $12 million surplus left the the previous administration and squandering the millions received by the county from the tobacco law suit. The attempt to raise the tax failed to pass this past Friday. The county parks are now closed, county roads are not being plowed, county workers are supposed to be laid off in droves and the department heads is taking the matter to the courts.
I sure hope Lowes wasn't given a tax break. There'll be public hanging.
-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)
So your county officials are throwing a hissy fit and punishing the voters? Funny how when tax increases don't pass, it's the services most visible that get cut first, isn't it? Nobody would have noticed any decreases in staff at the county offices such as a few less clerks or some county officials having to share executive assistants or maybe some cuts in landscaping staff or other "non-essential" services. Nope, when the public refuses to go along with a tax increase, they want to show how shortsighted the move was by cutting where people will see it.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety Army General Richard Cody
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
...an all too true lament for the old-timey store...
Yeah, there's one of those here, too....although in this one he won't get up out of the chair she will and seems to have an uncanny knowledge of where everything is, some of which has been there collecting dust for
50 years or more...it's the one place I go when needing an old whatever it is because it will be the only place there's a chance. But, you're right a lot of their new stock is the same as the Borg's since the only distributors left are all the same ones... :(
There're a couple of farm supplies that still buy American for the most part here (the Co-Op) primarily, and that's the primary place I go. Somewhat more expensive for routine hardware, but not outrageous.
As for true "woodworking" supplies, there's no place in town for anything other than some carpentry supplies...too small a market. But that's not a new phenomenon.
Correct. I believe I have heard this discussion before and that it's illegal to allow a store to collect sales tax and not pay it into the taxing agency. That's allowing the store to tax people and that is illegal.
There's not a city within 400 miles of us that would touch Syracuse...that hardly qualifies as rural in my estimation...It's a point of reference thing. :)
Town here is 5k (and only one of those). The Wal-Mart in town draws from as much as 80-100 miles away, but in doing so has decimated entirely the facilities in the small communities and the independents in town... :(
The economic draw area is considered by the COC to be about 80 mi radius (mostly west/south, there are a couple of slightly larger places 60 mi N and 80 mi NE). The total population in that area is estimated at about
50k, tops. W/ recent agrinomics I expect that's optimistic.
The Country Executive came up with a "Green Budget" where everything was rosy with the added penny in sales tax and a "Red Budget" where all necessary spending was axed without the increase. It was proposed that the County Executive get rid of his chauffeur, county provided personal car and his two assistants but that wasn't in either plan (okay, he did get rid of the chauffeur but put him is a cushy job that pays more than the > $70,000/year he was making) .
The public never got to vote on the matter. It was his own legislature that voted the tax increase down. The Sheriff's Department, District Attorney's Office, County Department. of Social Services, and I forget who else, are all planning on taking the proposed layoffs to the courts.
-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.