Latest / Small Business Success with Fexingo: Local Companies, Main Street Stories, and Community Commerce / How a Local Hardware Store Used Workshops to Beat Home Depot
Transcript
- Lucas: You walk into a Home Depot, and depending on the location, you're looking at anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 square feet of aisles. The lighting is fluorescent, the shelves go up twenty feet, and you can buy a single nail or a whole kitchen renovation. It's optimized for scale, for one-stop shopping, for the contractor buying in bulk and the weekend warrior grabbing a chainsaw. Luna: And then there's Jones & Sons Hardware on Belmont Street in Portland. About 2,000 square feet. Wooden floors. A cat named Wrench that naps on the pipe fittings. Lucas: Exactly. They've been there since 1947. Third generation now. And when the big orange box opened a store three miles away in 2018, a lot of people assumed that would be the end of Jones & Sons. But the store is still there, and according to the owners, their revenue actually increased by 12 percent in the first year after Home Depot opened. Luna: How? They didn't try to compete on price. They couldn't. Home Depot's buying power means they can sell a box of screws for a dollar less than what Jones pays wholesale. Lucas: Right. So they went in the opposite direction. They leaned into something Home Depot is structurally terrible at: community-based education. Specifically, they started a free Saturday workshop program in the spring of 2019. Basic home repair stuff. How to fix a running toilet. How to patch drywall. How to safely replace an electrical outlet. And they didn't hire outside instructors for most of them. They used their own staff. Luna: The staff who already knew the customers by name. That's a huge trust advantage. Lucas: Exactly. Larry, the guy who's been behind the hardware counter for twenty-two years, leads the plumbing workshops. He knows exactly which questions people ask. So the workshops aren't generic YouTube tutorials. They're specific to the houses in that neighborhood—the weird plumbing in Portland's old bungalows, the odd knob and tube wiring you find in Craftsman homes. Luna: And the numbers? I read a case study from the Portland Small Business Development Center that tracked the first six months. They had 18 workshops, total attendance of about 340 people. Lucas: Right, and the key metric isn't just attendance. It's what happens after. The store tracked that 78 percent of workshop attendees made a same-day purchase of related materials. Average ticket: $85. The workshop itself cost them about $200 per session in supplies and staff overtime. So a single session with 20 people generates, say, $1,700 in immediate sales from that group. That's an 8-to-1 return on the cost of running the workshop. Luna: But the real value is the repeat visits. They started collecting email addresses at registration—simple Google Form on a tablet. By the end of that first year, they had a list of 1,200 people who had attended at least one workshop. They send a monthly newsletter with upcoming workshop topics, but also a 'project of the month' that ties to seasonal needs. Lucas: That email list is an asset that Home Depot can't replicate. Home Depot has a loyalty program with millions of names, but the signal to noise ratio is terrible. Jones & Sons's list is hyperlocal and self-selected. These are people who have already driven to the store, spent an hour learning from a trusted staff member, and bought something. Their open rate on that newsletter is around 45 percent, which is triple the industry average for retail emails. Luna: And they've expanded the concept. In 2022 they started 'Fix-It Friday' evenings aimed at renters and apartment dwellers. Quick sessions, like how to unclog a drain or use a stud finder. That brought in a younger crowd who might not own a house but still need basic skills. Lucas: What I love about this is that the workshops are a loss leader that builds a moat. Home Depot can slash prices on a box of screws, but they can't create a workshop where the instructor knows that your specific house was built in 1927 and the floor joists are 16 inches on center... well, actually wait, they're probably 24 inches because that's how they did it in that era. Luna: And Larry would know that. That's the moat. Lucas: So we've talked about the numbers and the strategy. But I also think there's a psychological element here. When you learn something in a workshop—when you actually fix that leaky faucet yourself—you associate that feeling of competence with the place where you learned it. You're not just a customer at Jones & Sons. You're a graduate of the Jones & Sons school of home repair. And that loyalty is incredibly durable. Luna: Yeah, I think that's the deeper story. The workshops created a community of people who see the store as a resource, not just a vendor. Lucas: And that's something we see across a lot of the small businesses we cover on this show. The ones that survive against the big chains don't try to play the big chain's game. They find a dimension where the chain is weak—service, expertise, community—and they triple down on it. Luna: I'd add that the workshop model also made the store a destination. People drive past a Home Depot every day and don't think twice. But a workshop at Jones & Sons? That's an event. You plan your Saturday around it. Lucas: And you bring your kid. Or your neighbor. And then you buy a new faucet while you're there. It's a virtuous cycle. Luna: Before we wrap up, I want to mention something that matters to us. This show stays ad-free because listeners like you support it. If you've gotten something out of these conversations—a practical idea, a new way of thinking about your own business—a couple of dollars a month genuinely keeps us going. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's how we keep the lights on and the cat pictures coming. Lucas: And that support really does make a difference. It means we can keep bringing you stories like this one without any sponsor interference. So thank you to everyone who contributes. Luna: Now, one last thing about Jones & Sons: in 2023, they started a partnership with a local nonprofit that teaches woodworking to at-risk youth. The store donates materials and space, and the nonprofit runs classes. It's another layer of community connection that a big box store just can't do. Lucas: I think that's the ultimate lesson. The workshops started as a marketing tactic, but they evolved into something much more organic. They became the store's identity. And when the next recession hits—or the next big-box competitor—that identity is going to be what keeps people coming back.