Hardware wars:

The continuing saga of the battle for your buck!

Dear Mayor Brown,

    As I hope your know, I am a longtime and very enthusiastic supporter of yours, and continue to enjoy your being Mayor of San Francisco as much as I enjoyed the prospect when I voted for you.

    As you may also know, I am a nationally syndicated columnist with Universal Press Syndicate, writing the column "Mr. HandyPerson," which appears locally in the S.F. Examiner.

    In my life and in my writing, I am a strong believer in and advocate for neighborhood hardware stores. I have long watched the disintegration of small hardware stores in direct relation to the promulgation of the "big box" home retailers, like Home Depot, Orchard Supply, and some of the other large national chains. As someone who knows and depends upon the skills and services of local, neighborhood hardware stores, and also, as someone who is personally aware of the shortcomings of the large chain hardware retailers (bad selection, zero service, the inability to buy a few of any particular small part, no one who can answer a basic question, over-packaging, cheap goods advertised at sale prices and sold at a loss to lure in customers ... I could go on ...), I am deeply concerned about the potential appearance of Home Depot in San Francisco.

    With such fine local independents as Cliff's Variety in the Castro, Cole Hardware® in Cole Valley, the Mission, and Downtown now, Glen Park Hardware, Tuggey's Hardware in Noe Valley, and many other well-run, longtime neighborhood hardware stores who will find it nearly impossible to match sale prices of a national retailer like Home Depot, I find it an unacceptable and unnecessary gamble to create a handful of low-paid jobs at the potential expense of local businesses and their payrolls and sales tax revenues to the City.

    The Home Depots of this world cannot truly compete with the smaller hardware stores in terms of service, expertise, selection, personal relationships with neighbors, and neighborhood stability in the neighborhoods where they currently exist. They CAN, however, succeed in creating the illusion in the public's mind, through massive advertising, that their prices are substantially lower (they are not, in reality) and they CAN, by taking major losses in local start-up operations, put a lot of smaller stores out of business, as they have done repeatedly and gleefully across the country.

    San Francisco does not need Home Depot. Home Depot wants San Francisco's lucrative hardware business, and they can be expected to engage in ruthless tactics to steal it away from existing merchants of long standing. This is NOT a good plan or a good idea. Upon closer inspection of potential and current City revenues, I think you will also discover that the minimal, low-paying jobs created by a Home Depot and the sales tax revenue generated will produce an eventual negative gain for the City when local merchants begin to fail under the mega-chain's ruthless advertising. We consumers will end up with fewer options and resources, less selection, less hands-on help, and more neighborhood business deterioration.

    Moreover, as a regular consumer of hardware and a still-practicing handyman, I am about as likely to drive to the suburbs to buy a larger-than-needed, over-packaged box of screws or nails as I am to drive to the waterfront to do the same. Right now, I can buy three brass screws, 15 nails, one door hinge, and a single lightbulb by walking down the block to Cliff's. I do not save money buying four light bulbs at a cheaper price when all I need is one. I'm afraid the economics don't work out on this idea for either the consumer or the City.

    Please seriously consider my remarks here, knowing that I am your friend and supporter in nearly all other ways. Your most recent idea about cleaning up the news racks, for example, is a brilliant and a long-overdue plan, sorely needed. Home Depot is not. I beg you to reconsider your support for this bad idea. Visit a thriving local hardware enterprise, like Cole Hardware®, and take a look at what we could potentially be losing in this deal. It means a great deal to me personally and to a lot of other local consumers, neighbors, and neighborhood businesses who rely on the local hardware stores for help. I don't think anyone "relies" on Home Depot for anything, other than the millionaire owners who rely on a continuous revenue stream by destroying the hardware business across the country. San Francisco, frankly, deserves better. Stable, longtime neighborhood business areas are part of what make this a vibrant and still-livable city. And, as they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

    As ever, my best wishes and kind regards,

-Mark A. Hetts, AKA Mr. HandyPerson

The S.F. Examiner and Universal Press Syndicate

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