Hammering down a successful business: Roberts Hardware has been a family tradition since 1976
Johnny Roberts has been in the hardware business since he was 7-years-old, so it’s no surprise to find him still in the hardware business decades later.
Roberts, a second generation hardware man, owns Roberts Hardware on Depot Street. He has one employee, his son, Steve Roberts, whom he expects will take over the family business one day.
He said he came to be at that location after purchasing the building from H.E. Hillis and H.C. McCollum after he moved to McMinnville after working in hardware sales for a Birmingham, Ala., company which had territory in McMinnville.
McCollum had operated an implement store there, which sold tractors and other farm equipment, while Hillis ran a hardware store on Main Street, Roberts said of the store’s beginning. The two were related to Mr. Hillis’ father, who had started a general store that was opened in 1917 in Irving College. Roberts said the present-day store has roots in the 1917 general store through the pair.
According to Roberts, the pair had gone out of the implement business in the mid-1960s, leaving the building vacant.
“They owned this and they were renting the building on Main Street, so they moved all of the operation down here,” Roberts said, “Then we bought the store in 1976.”
Today, the hardware store competes with major discount stores, which is a fact of modern life. To remain competitive, Roberts offers not just hardware, but other things one wouldn’t expect in a hardware store. He is also open six days a week, arriving at the store at 6 a.m., well before it opens at 7 a.m., for another day at the office that lasts on weekdays until 5 p.m. He’s also open until 2 p.m. on Saturday.
For a Case knife, one needs to look no further than a display shelf, positioned near the entrance. The store also stocks butter churns, marbles, crock jars, bird house gourds, cast iron cookware and stoves, purple martin houses, seeds, plants and even lamps.
It has a general store feel.
“We’ve just tried to add some lines they don’t carry,” he said.
Although Roberts has 35 years in the National Guard and U.S. Army Reserves, his heart is in hardware.
“It just gets in your blood and that’s the only thing you know,” he added.
Steve Roberts said he may very well follow in his father’s footsteps. He started working there in 1979 shortly after graduating from high school.
“It’s fun. It’s challenging. You have to diversify and offer things that other people don’t,” he said.