The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Spitzer Hardware continuing 100-year tradition
Spitzer Hardware is looking to continue what has been more than a century of giving the village of Grafton and the surrounding communities a local place to fill their hardware needs.
“January this year I was named the manager and Linda (Lewis, sales specialist at the store) and I are running the store offering new items for plumbing, electrical, and hardware repairs,” said Crystal Mick. “We have almost everything you could need including the nuts and bolts. We also provide screen repair, glass cutting, special orders and a lawn and garden section.
“We’re also excited to introduce we have just added fluorescent LED for commercial tubes, 4-foot and 8-foot, and fixtures,” he added. “The LEDs are rated at 50,000 plus hours, they have a brighter light and up to 70 percent savings on energy costs.”
Mick said the big draw of the store, located at 885 Main St., is that it allows folks to shop local.
“Our big aim is to make sure folks in the area don’t have to leave town and shop at the big-box stores,” she said. “Recently, we have been looking at competitive pricing on a lot of our items. We have done some adjusting to the prices to make it more affordable for our customers to come here for whatever hardware needs they might have. We have brands including Bosch, Stanley, Rust-Oleum and Pecks.”
Mick said the location of the business helps bring in customers.
“We have a lot of contractors who come in from out of town and are doing a job locally,” she said. “It’s often a situation where they forget something for the job, and they see that we have our shop downtown.
“We also get a lot of business from the different departments in the village for sewage, electrical and general street jobs.”
Mick said business has been good.
“We have seen an increase in foot traffic,” she said. “There are some regulars and some newcomers, but it’s that range of newcomer to expert that stops by because we are in town and we have what they need.”
Mick said the store still keeps the tradition alive in Grafton.
“We still carry some of the antiques the business has been known for,” she said. “We definitely want to keep the nostalgia alive, so we still have some of the odd items you would find at a local store.
“This, however, has been scaled back because we are adding more and more to keep up with the big-box stores, but we do have a small amount of antiques a lot of Grafton residents are accustomed to seeing.”
Mick said the store also does some changes for seasonal items.
“Pretty soon we will be adding in the number of shovels, salt and driveway markers we have during the wintertime,” she said. “We then add items like grass seed when spring rolls around. One of the big items we offer are sump pumps. We get that a lot, and it’s another one of those items we have to make things convenient.”
Mick said the store will work to get someone what they need.
“There was an elderly couple who came in and needed something we didn’t have,” she said. “This couple didn’t have a computer or a smartphone, so Linda was able to use her phone and ordered the part for them. We make sure to help out in that way, and we also recommend different contractors for folks. We have a bulletin board in front that has different specialists and we will help make recommendations for folks. If folks have questions on a project; we’re here to help.”
Mick said the store has a great relationship with the village.
“We have a close relationship with our mayor (David DiVencenzo),” she said. “He comes by a lot to check in along with our police chief Dan (Clark). We see a lot of these folks both on and off duty, and they have really been great to us.”
Lewis said Grafton has been very good to the business.
“They have been very supportive of us,” she said. “We get a lot of the same folks who come in needing help with an old farmhouse they’ve lived in for a while, and I love listening to the customers and their stories; we’re here to stay.”
Spitzer Hardware was originally opened by George Spitzer in 1904, and his son, Del, worked at the store with his father. Henry Ford came through on the railway and requested permission to place an automobile in the window of the hardware store and George Spitzer agreed.
Spitzer’s interest remained focus on the hardware and he asked that Del help him wrap up the sale of the new automobiles and that’s when Del enlisted the help of his brother John Spitzer. The two branched out and launched the automobile industry. Today, Alan Spitzer, third generation, and his children Alison and Andrew, still own the hardware store and 16 Spitzer Autoworld locations.