Wednesday, October 08, 2008

The little big guy

ace hardwareAce Hardware.

I dunno if they have one in your neighborhood - but they're great. You wanna buy a single screw? They have it. Bird feeder? For sure. Little red wagon? Yup.

Home Depot? NOT a chance. You have to buy a box of a thousand screws.

If I were independently wealthy, I'd buy stock in Ace, even if it was not a good investment. But I don't think they're listed on the stock market.

The double bonus for me is that my local Ace is a very short bicycle ride away.

5 comments:

Richard Lawry said...

We had an Ace Hardware here in Mena, but it closed last year. Now we have no hardware store. We have to make do with whatever Wal-Mart carries.

Jenny said...

I love a good hardware store.
They are hard to find these days with all the big chain ones around.

Phyllis Hunt McGowan said...

That's very, very good to know. One thing about living in the US I've had to adjust to is that things are typically sold by the hundreds. At home you can even buy a bag of potato chips no bigger than your hand. Same with medicine.
I miss that.
I wonder if there's one near me. I hope so.

jasonjyee said...

hrm... i buy single bolts and other things at home depot... for about the same price as ace. screws usually come in small dime bags of 4... which isn't too bad, considering i rarely need just one. if i do, i just consider the rest spares. the problem is that their selection is so large that it's hard to find what you need if you don't know the specific size and type.

My biggest complaint about Ace is that prices for non-sale items are anywhere from the same price as home depot to nearly twice as expensive.

Anonymous said...

Good reminder. I really miss the non-giant hardware stores that used to be in every town, until Home Depot and Lowes put most of them out of business.

Using the www.acehardware.com ad link that google helpfully put in the sidebar of your blog, I just went to the Ace website and used their locator to find an Ace store I didn't know about that's on my way home from work.

Thanks!
- Rich