No website, generations of neighbourhood service Corydon Hardware to shutter after more than seven decades in business By: Gabrielle Piché Posted: 6:24 PM CST Monday, Mar. 4, 2024

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This article was published 04/03/2024 (884 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Phil Marriott takes a quick trek down the street to get his lawnmower serviced, his vacuum fixed and his keys cut.

“If you need something, you just go in and ask Rob for it, and he gets it for you,” Marriott explained. “You go to Home Depot, you’re wandering up and down the aisles.”

Marriott has been a regular at Corydon Hardware for years. However, his stops at the shop — which has been around since at least 1949 — are soon to end.

The owner is retiring, and he doesn’t believe selling the business is smart.

“There’s not enough profitability in it for someone to buy this from me (and) pay rent,” Rob Benson said Monday. “It’s not really viable.”

After all, there are chain hardware stores throughout Winnipeg. Online shopping is a click away, Benson added.

Corydon Hardware (838 Corydon Ave.) doesn’t have a website. “I don’t have the time to maintain it, and I’m not going to pay someone to do it,” Benson said.

He barely has time for vacation — he and another staff member work the store, repairing customers’ items and guiding shoppers to goods.

At one point in the 1970s, there were roughly six people on staff, Benson recalled. He became an employee that decade, spending evenings as a teenager repairing windows and screens. Corydon Hardware was his grandfather Edward’s business, then his father Michael’s, before Benson took over.

Residents in the area brought their shopping lists, items to be repaired — and conversation.

Sometime during Benson’s father’s reign, antique items began decorating the shop. Heirloom saws and hammers backdrop old lanterns and jugs.

Those might go to friends or be sold once Benson empties the building. He’s planning to close Corydon Hardware at the end of April, days before he turns 60.

“I’m going to miss some of the customers,” he said.

Regular customers likely noticed a decline in certain products, such as paint (Corydon Hardware’s paint mixing machine aged out).

“I’d like to see more generalist merchandise sold (in the area).”–Rob Benson

In other instances, though, the retailer couldn’t keep up with its larger peers.

“There’s certain items where we just can’t compete,” Benson stated. “They buy it direct, they put their… special pricing on the stuff.”

Still, the neighbourhood shop attracted customers through niche items, such as oil for kerosene lanterns.

Patrons have been buying fewer seasonal items over the years, Benson noted. While customer counts decline, products’ prices rise, he added.

He plans to rent the 838 Corydon Ave. space. A new tenant hasn’t yet been signed.

“I’d like to see more generalist merchandise sold (in the area),” Benson said. “That’s the kind of store it takes… if you’re going to have a retail front.”

Donna Anderson echoed the wish for more local retail. It might draw traffic down Corydon Avenue, where she operates Peepers Swimwear with Marriott.

“He was a great neighbour,” Anderson reflected about Benson.

Heather Wasson, who lives in the area, had difficulty picturing the Corydon strip without its hardware shop.

“I genuinely don’t know what else could go in there, because that’s just been there for so long,” Wasson said. “Losing something like that is… sad.”

“Losing something like that is… sad.”–Heather Wasson

Pollock’s Hardware Co-op is one of the last Winnipeg shops of its kind, noted general manager Kaitlyn Peters.

The Main Street business has existed since the 1920s. It has history, just like Corydon Hardware, Peters said.

“You’re a fixture in the community, and there’s that nostalgia piece,” she added. “It’s always sad to see that history go.”

Benson Park, near Corydon Hardware, was named after the shop’s founder and his wife.

Competing with chain retailers can be a “bit of a struggle” because of corporations’ pricing and breadth of items, Peters said.

Pollock’s became a co-operative in 2008, after closing the prior year. Community support has kept the store alive, Peters underlined.

“It’s hard to go it on your own these days.”–Michael McLarney

Local hardware shops are better off being co-operatives or part of a retail group like Home Hardware, said Michael McLarney, founder of Hardlines, which produces reports on Canada’s hardware and home improvement industry.

Home Hardware counts some 1,050 independently owned stores across Canada. There are 15 within 100 kilometres of Winnipeg, but none in the Manitoba capital itself.

“It’s hard to go it on your own these days,” McLarney said. “That support from head office really helps level the playing field.”

Hardlines has tracked a decline in the number of hardware stores Canada-wide.

Remaining shops generally garner more sales, McLarney said. He couldn’t provide numbers by deadline.

Rising rents, no succession plan for ownership, increased competition with box stores — all are reasons for local shops’ diminishment, McLarney said. Meantime, it’s increasingly expensive to begin as a retailer.

“Most good cities are a collection of communities, and every community needs its hardware store.”–Michael McLarney

Some hardware stores have transitioned to general operations, selling dog food and décor, among other things, for survival. McLarney believes the trend will increase.

Sixty-six cents of every dollar spent at a local shop circulates back into the local economy, compared to 11 cents when shopping at multinationals, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

However, customers feeling financially strained and looking for deals tend to shop at box retailers with discounts, noted SeoRhin Yoo, CFIB policy analyst of the Prairies and North.

“Most good cities are a collection of communities, and every community needs its hardware store,” McLarney said. “They’re important for serving those communities.”

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com