Hardware store for sale. Guess it’s time. So here’s the deal. My wife and I bought Dunsmuir Hardware in 1975. It was an opportunity for us to get our kids (and ourselves too) out of the city and move toward a slower, more wholesome, healthier and more meaningful lifestyle. And in thirty-seven years it has been all that and more. Now it’s time for us to realize that it has come to that point in our lives when we have to let go of it. It isn’t easy. We love our old store. It has made it possible for us to live a great life. It hasn’t made us rich in a monetary sense but it has made us rich in life experience. We live in a beautiful place – next to the beautiful upper Sacramento River in the Siskiyou range of the Cascade mountains. Situated in a forested park-like setting at the base of Mount Shasta with four beautiful seasons each year. Wonderful and friendly small-town people. Clean air. Pure water. Peaceful lifestyle.
Dunsmuir is a town of around 1500 people – plus or minus – with its own schools, library, parks, city government, and its historic business district – of which Dunsmuir Hardware is perhaps the most significant contributor. The town is located just off Interstate 5 which connects to Redding, California (50 miles to the south) and Medford, Oregon (150 miles to the north), so we have access to city “culture” if we need it. The somewhat bigger town of Mount Shasta City (which has a large modern medical facility) is just 8 miles north of us and the charming towns of McCloud and Weed are each about 15 miles away.
Our building – which dates from 1916 – sits in the middle of the Dunsmuir Historic Business District. It has been re-wired and re-roofed and re-decorated inside and out within the recent past. It is roughly 100ft deep and 50ft wide and has a basement under the back half which we rent out to a builder. The floor is the original natural red fir that was most likely cut and milled locally back in 1916. The 17ft high ceiling is an embossed tin that was installed in 1995. It is virtually the same as the original pattern that would have been popular in 1916. Lighting is modern fluorescent in fixtures that were also installed in 1995 but which have an antique appearance as do the ceiling fans. We installed a modern state of the art heating system three years ago that keeps our winter heating bill to a moderate level and we supplement that with the old wood stove that gives our store so much warmth on cold winter days. The building is in great shape for a 96-year-old structure.
Our business? You can probably see it best by just taking a look at our website – and reading the different blogs. www.dunsmuirhardware.org. There you will find a pretty complete picture of our products and services, our history, and our way of doing business. We have three employees – middle-age guys who represent our store well. It’s a friendly and relaxed environment and we’re on a first-name basis with most of our customers. They appreciate the time we’re willing to spend with them helping them to complete a project, fix something, select a gift for somebody, answer their questions, or discuss the weather. Current economic conditions have had a minimal effect on our store. Building and home repair businesses are up. If you can’t sell your home, you still need to maintain it. Tourist business seems as strong as ever.
We’re a True Value hardware store and are served well by True Value. Roughly 80% of our inventory comes from True Value and the remainder is from other independent suppliers, particularly in the area of sporting goods and giftwares. We receive weekly deliveries from True Value and our pricing is highly competitive. Our point-of-sale computer system is tremendously valuable in controlling our inventory, ordering, pricing, and managing our inventory. It also does our accounts receivable and provides management reports. We are a licensed agent for the California Department of Fish and Game and we sell fishing and hunting licenses through a dedicated computer system. We also accept electric power payments for Pacific Power and Light which brings a lot of traffic into our store as people come in to pay their bills.
What do we want to sell? The whole package. What we can offer is a “turn-key” business opportunity. A buyer can step into an established and well-managed business and take off with it. There are no doubt new ideas that new owners could bring and which could grow the business into new areas. We want to sell the business with its established reputation and customer base, the building, all the fixtures and equipment (computers, pipe threading equipment, custom paint tinting, tools, and supplies), and all of the antiques that are part of the image of the business.
Our antique collection is legendary and without exaggeration, there are thousands of dollars worth of antique tools, hardware, housewares, documents, pictures, cans, and bottles. They belong to the store and will go with it. We could go on and on telling about our business but this – and our website – covers the high points. Please feel free to contact us if you have any interest or questions or know somebody who might like to consider the opportunity. The business is not currently listed with a realtor, we want to see if we can find a buyer ourselves first. Our contact information is on our website. Please take a look.