11 hours ago
2
Daniel Kline
Sun, December 7, 2025 astatine 11:03 AM CST 6 min read
Before Home Depot and Lowe's took implicit the market, section hardware stores utilized to service arsenic the halfway of galore communities. Yes, they sold hardware and gathering supplies, but they besides acted arsenic a benignant of wide store.
I retrieve visiting stores similar this arsenic a child, wherever you bargain a shovel, a mailbox, oregon duct tape, but besides insubstantial towels, and possibly immoderate barbecue grill supplies. Because these stores were section and locally operated, their owners had the enactment to banal what was needed.
Home Depot and Lowe's, to beryllium fair, banal each point named above, but they're impersonal big-box stores, not assemblage retailers wherever the owners cognize astir customers by sight. That's not a diss connected the large chains, conscionable the world of however the marketplace has changed.
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As of 2025, determination are astir 12,906 businesses classified arsenic “hardware stores” successful the U.S., according to IBISWorld.
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The fig of hardware‑store businesses has had a flimsy antagonistic maturation complaint implicit caller years, a compound yearly maturation complaint (CAGR) of -0.6% betwixt 2020 and 2025, the aforesaid IBISWorld study shared.
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The percent of hardware stores that are genuinely autarkic (mom‑and‑pop style) has dropped implicit the decades, from 47% successful 1992 down to 42% by 2018, reported The Handbuilt City.
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According to a 2024/2025 survey of autarkic home‑improvement retailers, among respondents, 69% operated conscionable 1 store, 47% were tiny stores (less than 10,000 sq. ft.), and astir fractional were located successful agrarian areas, according to Hardware Retailing.
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Among autarkic retailers successful Q2 2025, lone 38% reported year‑over‑year income increases versus 37% reporting declines, portion 25% saw level sales, indicating a broadly stagnant environment, the aforesaid survey showed.
"The mean autarkic hardware retail store proprietor — the vicinity Joe making your keys oregon selling you overgarment — is turning 60 and his children are not rushing to instrumentality implicit the store, the North American Retail Hardware Association told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
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That's going to pb to much stores closing.
“It is simply a immense contented we are focused on,” said Scott Wright, enforcement manager of the Leadership Institute for NRHA. “Many of those retailers don’t person a succession program for passing that down to the adjacent procreation oregon idiosyncratic wrong the company.“
Now, different family-owned section hardware store volition soon adjacent its doors forever.
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