Upward and Onward!

We have been busy at work around the hardware stores in the last year. Improving our product selection is a task we spend a great deal of time on. From asking customers about items they would like to see, to tracking trends, to engaging in social media, we expend a lot of effort on getting our selection just right. Many of you have helped us in this regard by suggesting items or product lines for us to take a look at. We also stock a lot of specialty items specifically for individual customers. Sometimes there is an odd furnace filter size you need fairly regularly or maybe a specific glass cleaner you love, whatever it is, we are happy to stock it in our stores and we do this for many of our customers.

As you can imagine, after not much time at all, a store can get packed with additional items on the shelves. Well, after 10 successful years in Timberville, our store was beyond full and it was time to expand. As mentioned before, we took over the adjacent portion of our building and have since completed an extensive remodel. Besides being able to expand our square footage by another 50%, we were able to widen the aisles and increase our actual inventory by almost double! That's a lot of improvements. Many of you helped us celebrate our "new" store with bands, giveaways, prizes and a TON of sales.

Besides just adding a LOT more to our existing product categories (plumbing and lawn & garden especially) we have also been able to add some new services that have been incredibly popular. Most notably has been our new chipkey system in Bridgewater. We received MANY requests for this service and were able to take advantage of a special at the most recent hardware show. The service allows us to duplicate most of the vehicle chipkeys and do it at a fraction of the cost that dealerships have been charging. This service has been more popular then we even expected (and we expected it to be popular!). So, in the next few weeks we will be looking to expand it even further by being able to duplicate sidewinder keys (pictured at right). Many newer GM, Honda and Toyota vehicles require this type of key.

These are just a few of the things that have been going on around our little hardware stores, but if you would like to know even more (and much more up-to-date information) like us on Facebook at facebook.com/randyshardware or on Twitter at twitter.com/randysdib!