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The Little Hardware Stores That Could

Tribune photo by CLIFF McBRIDE

Old-fashioned screw-in fuses for older homes are among items that can be found at Bay to Bay, which opened in 1947.

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By PENNY CARNATHAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 21, 2008

Need a washboard? Head to Town 'N Country Ace Hardware. How about an aluminum washtub big enough for your Lab and his rubber duckie? Check Bay to Bay Hardware in South Tampa. Cane knife? Tampa Bay Hardware in Seminole Heights.

Household items you might have presumed went the way of glass toilet tank floats may still be found at one of Tampa's few remaining old-fashioned hardware stores. Some goods are tailored to the neighborhood: plumbing parts for the 1960s-era guts of Town 'N Country's homes; brass-and-glass doorknobs for South Tampa's vintage abodes; decorative flue stops and draft regulators for Seminole Heights' antique furnaces.

The stores may seem anachronistic, but old-school savvy is what's helped them survive almost 30 years of goliath Home Depot and 14 of its rival Lowe's, which itself started life decades earlier as a hardware store.

How do the little guys keep the cash register busy? With helpful, at-your-side-in-a-heartbeat workers who can almost always find just what their customers need.

"I can always get service. I don't have to look for someone to help me," says Ann Tobey, stopping by Bay to Bay recently - for the third day in a row, in fact. Today she's brought in a broken garden wagon handle, for which manager Mike Pisarski quickly finds a nut and bolt.

"A whopping 70 cents," he tells her, ringing up her purchase.

The day before, she came in for nails. And the day before that, a can of paint.

"If this store goes out of business," she says, "we're all in trouble around here."

Haven't been to a hardware store lately? Let's go shopping!

Ace of Town 'N Country

7575 W. Hillsborough Ave., Tampa

(813) 884-1495

Proprietor: Chris Kiszla

Established: Around 1976

Top seller: Keys - 50,000 to 60,000 a year. "We're known for cutting them right the first time," Kiszla says.

Perks: Free popcorn, popped fresh four to five times a day

Founded in 1924 by a group of Chicago hardware store owners uniting for buying power, the Ace Hardware chain remains a powerhouse with 4,600 stores.

The Town 'N Country shop is one of the smallest at 7,000 square feet. It's also among the biggest in terms of customers holding Ace Rewards cards: more than 30,000, says Chris Kiszla, proprietor since 1986.

"Our store is one of the tops in the country," he says.

The chain started diversifying its inventory in the mid-1960s, branching out from shovels and nails to beauty aids and greeting cards. Today's dealers stock goods recommended by Ace and augmented by their own creativity. Kiszla is particularly proud of his popular Webkinz children's toys - "I constantly get comments like, 'A hardware store selling Webkinz?'" He also has a colorful wall of Crocs in all styles and sizes and even a new jewelry display near the register.

But the mainstays remain hardware - fasteners and plumbing fixtures, replacement elements for ovens, light bulbs - and a friendly staff.

"I had an epiphany about 15 years ago," Kiszla says. "I started hiring for personality and quit hiring for expertise.

"I think there's a 'Cheers' factor here.

Bay to Bay Hardware & Pool

4215 Bay to Bay Blvd., Tampa

(813) 839-5977

Proprietor: Eric Jacobson

Established: 1947

Top seller: Roll Tongue Froggy Keychain, $1.99 each. "Moms and grandmas buy 'em all day long," manager Mike Pisarski says.

Perks: You can pick up your pool supplies here, too, and even get pool service.

Some of Tampa's oldest homes surround Bay to Bay. So when their owners have to replace old-fashioned screw-in fuses, hardware for jalousie windows and mortise lock sets for aging doors, this is where they go.

Manager Mike Pisarski picks up a palm-sized thingamajig.

"It's a standard base lamp socket adapter," he says. "You won't find this anywhere else. I sell four or five a year."

They're $3.49 each.

In another bin he finds a travel-trailer receptacle adapter.

"The retirees who come to the RV park at MacDill and spend six months, a lot of them have older RVs. They need these." They won't find them anywhere else either, he promises.

Bay to Bay has finds for the less-specialized shopper, too. The Action Garden Defense Owl, a life-sized, wide-eyed bobblehead meant to scare off garden thieves, perches high on a shelf. It sells for $29.99. Got a chandelier? Try Hagerty Chandelier Cleaner, $9.99 a bottle.

What has probably kept Bay to Bay in business more than anything else these past couple of decades, Pisarski says, is the owner's smart move when The Home Depot first came to town.

"We diversified, started selling pool supplies," he says. "That spawned a pool service. We service 280 pools in the area. "If we hadn't gotten into pool supplies 20 years ago, we probably wouldn't be here."

Tampa Bay Hardware

5511 N. Nebraska Ave., Tampa

(813) 231-4241

Proprietor: Tom Roberts

Founded: 1941 (oldest hardware store in Tampa)

Hottest item: Nuts, bolts, pipe fittings; "We have hundreds of sales a day under a dime," Roberts says.

Perks: Antique tools, toys and plumbing parts all over the place and a "mini flea market" stocked by Roberts' family. Customer Joe Cordaro didn't find the cutting wheel he was looking for on the shelves but did find it - for $2 - on the "flea market" tables.

Step into Tampa Bay Hardware and step back in time. There's no air conditioning; giant fans in wood boxes effectively circulate the warm air.

"It gets hot in August," owner Tom Roberts concedes.

The store opened during the heyday of this neighborhood, when it was a suburb full of middle-class families. When Interstate 75 (now I-275) cut it in two, the effect was like slicing a major artery. Families left, homes deteriorated, crime moved in. Seminole Heights withered.

It was in pretty bad shape when Roberts came to town in the early 1970s, he says.

New homeowners buying and rehabbing the historical bungalows helped revitalize the neighborhood - and the big, barnlike hardware store. Roberts sells them the Stainless Steel Window Controls they need for a simple fix when the cords break in their double-hung sash windows. They're $3.15 each. The wood-frame screens for those windows require a hard-to-find hanger set, which, of course, Roberts carries - $4.15.

The biggest sellers are from the rows upon rows of bins of nails and bolts and nuts and washers. How many bins are there? Don't ask Roberts. He doesn't know.

As with the other surviving hardware stores, Roberts says customer service is as big a commodity as inventory. He does know how to fix things, though. He holds a degree in industrial engineering. A hardware store seems the perfect place for a guy like Tom Roberts..

"I love waiting on people," he says, "and figuring things out for them."

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