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The
trend isn’t family businesses any longer, it’s corporate giants.
But Pete’s is a family business that will remain a family
business for at least another generation, according to Pete’s
daughters Peggy Kelly and Carla Anderson.
They plan to continue running the store when Pete and Ruth
Fredericks retire completely. And
it may be a family business longer than that.
Peggy’s daughter, BreeAnn, 16, works in the store and
already knows a lot more than her mother does about what’s in the
plumbing aisle, and Carla’s 11-year-old son, Riley, comes in to
smash boxes and stock shelves.
Carla,
Peggy, Pete and Ruth are equal partners.
“We all make decisions together.
Sometimes we have our fights, but we always work it out,”
Carla says.
[Pete Fredericks displays a couple of the
pipes he
carves and sells in the hardware store.]
The
trend isn’t independent mom and pop businesses any longer, either,
but chains or franchises linked to a big corporate entity.
But in October of 1999, Pete’s became an independent
hardware store, breaking its ties with the chain it had been
affiliated with for 14 years. And as a result, say Peggy, Carla and Pete, sales and profits
have gone up.
“With
the chain, we weren’t carrying enough merchandise to get good
service. Because the chain was growing so fast, a lot of things were
always on back order,” Carla says.
Now Pete’s gets its merchandise from the Blish-Mize Company
of Atchison, Kan., an independent hardware supplier since 1871.
“We
can buy as much as we want and no more,” Carla continues.
“With the bigger
company, if I wanted Phillips screwdrivers I had to buy a case of
12. Now I can buy one or two.
I order Monday morning and we receive our order Wednesday
night and it’s on the shelves by Thursday.
We are getting name brands and lower prices, so we can pass
on the savings to our customers.”
Another
trend is for businesses to move out to the edge of town and
build a bigger store. But
Pete’s is staying where it is, and the family doesn’t want to
see the store get any bigger.
Says
Carla, “The chain wanted us to move to the west side of town,
where so many businesses are going.
Then who would serve the people on this side of town?
We like being downtown and we like being small.
Without little stores like us, your only option will be to
run to a huge store with low-cost help that doesn’t know the
merchandise.”
Individuality
isn’t part of today’s trend, either.
Most places have a slick,
impersonal appearance. But
Pete likes having his old toy trucks displayed on shelves and his
wooden airplanes hanging from the ceiling.
A pipe smoker, Pete restores old pipes and carves new ones.
Some of his pipes are for sale in the store.
Worst
of all, it isn’t trendy to have fun at work.
But the people at Pete’s Hardware do that, too.
They joke with customers and each other.
“If
we’re going to be here 40-plus hours a week, we’ve got to have
some fun,” Carla says. “We
want to make customers feel they’re family and they’re welcome.
If our customers don’t walk out of here with smiles on
their faces, we haven’t done our job.”
The family didn’t start out planning to be in the hardware
business. The girls
grew up in Mendota, where their parents had a gas station.
Pete likes to fly small planes and had one until a couple of
years ago. One of his first planes he found in pieces stored in
somebody’s garage. He
bought it and put it together himself.
“Sunday
afternoons in Mendota we went to the airport and waited our turn to
fly,” Peggy remembers. “We
also took picnics and went junkin’, visiting junkyards and looking
for treasure in the trash.”
They
came to Lincoln 27 years ago, where Pete managed NAPA Auto Parts,
then ran an antique store, the Peddler Shop.
He had always wanted to have a hardware store, and he finally
opened Pete’s Hardware in the building on Logan Street.
From the beginning, Ruth helped out with the bookwork.
(To
top of second column)
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Peggy,
the older daughter, worked as a court reporter, then in the
State’s Attorney’s Office in Lincoln and at the high school.
She liked both court reporting and accounting, but more than
that, she says, “I always liked being in an environment where I
could get to know people.” For
the past 10 years that environment has been the hardware store,
where she helps with the accounting.
Now she’s doing most of it, as Ruth is retiring to two days
a week.
Carla,
who “doesn’t enjoy the numbers game,” is glad to leave the
bookwork to her sister. She’s
been working on the floor for 12 years and likes waiting on
customers. One of her
big jobs is ordering stock. Before
coming to the store, she sold insurance in Springfield, worked at
the prison, and worked for the Public Defender’s Office.
“Peggy
and I were on opposite sides of the law,” she jokes.
Now
the sisters work together and enjoy it.
“We could be locked up in a closet together and still have
a good time,” Peggy says.
Neither
of them would give up their present jobs, and they are especially
happy about going independent.
“When Mom and Dad got into the chain, it was a small,
family-oriented business. Now
it has become so big it wants to compete with even bigger chains.
It is no longer geared to small stores,” Carla says.
“It
was too much like big government,” Pete adds.
“We had lost control We
weren’t running our own store.”
[Three generations of the family work in
Pete's Hardware store. Pictured are Pete's daughter, Carla Anderson;
his granddaughter, BreeAnn Kelly; wife Ruth; daughter Peggy Kelly;
and Pete Fredericks.]
“We
are important to Blish-Mize,” Peggy explains.
“If we have a problem, they want to help us.
We didn’t see a representative of the chain for years, but
a Blish-Mize person is here every week.
We are a big fish in a small pond now.
Also, when we call, there is an actual person on the phone.
That is the unbelievable part.
I’m thrilled with the idea that whenever I call I get an
answer from a human being, not a big old circle of voice mail.”
“How
would you like it if you called Pete’s Hardware and an answering
machine said, ‘Leave your name and number and we will get back to
you’? That’s not
what you want to hear when you’ve got a plumbing problem,” Carla
says.
[The new sign for Pete's Hardware on South
Logan Street tells customers that the store is independent,
no longer part of a chain.]
“I
see hope for small mom and pop hardware stores again,” she
continues. “I hear a
lot of them talking about wanting to be independent again.
They are running into the same problems we did.”
Peggy,
too, thinks other small hardware stores can do what Pete’s
Hardware has done. She points out that they are saving time and money not being
part of a chain. They
don’t have to pay for national advertising, and they don’t have
to buy the selling aids the chains want them to purchase.
“The
chain wanted us to watch monthly meetings with CEOs on satellite,
buy tapes and listen to pep talks and motivational speakers,”
Peggy says. “We
don’t have time for that. We’re
too darn busy waiting on our customers.”
[Joan
Crabb]
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