Home Hardware Turns 60

In 1964, 122 independent hardware dealers in Ontario got together and decided they were stronger as a group than on their own. Led by Walter Hachborn out of St. Jacobs, they formed a buying cooperative that would let small-town stores compete with the big chains on price without giving up what made them different: local ownership, personal service, and roots in the community. They called it Home Hardware.

Sixty years later, Home Hardware is Canada's largest dealer-owned hardware cooperative, with over 1,000 stores from coast to coast. And the core idea hasn't changed. Every Home Hardware store is independently owned by the people who work in it. There's no distant head office making decisions about what your local store should carry or how it should treat you. The owner is the person behind the counter.

Our Part of the Story

Wayne and Lise Buote bought the local Callbeck's Home Hardware here in North Rustico in September 1990. It was a small hardware store serving a small community, and that was the point. Wayne and Lise knew this place. They raised their family here. They wanted to build something that would serve their neighbours well and last.

Thirty-four years later, the store has grown from that original footprint into a full building centre — lumber yard, kitchen and bath showroom, paint department, the works. Chris Buote grew up in this store, literally, and now helps run it. It's still a family operation, still independently owned, still rooted in North Rustico.

What Makes This Model Work

People sometimes ask how a store our size can carry what we carry and price it the way we do. The answer is the cooperative. Home Hardware's dealer-owned model gives us access to national buying power — the same warehouses, the same supplier relationships, the same exclusive brands like Beauti-Tone paint — without requiring us to be a franchise or give up control. We decide what goes on our shelves based on what our customers actually need, not what a corporate planogram says.

The PRO Road Shows, Homecoming events, and warehouse access — these are the tools that let a small store in North Rustico compete with the big boxes in Charlottetown. We can order from tens of thousands of products and have them on a truck to us within days. If we don't have it on the shelf, we can almost certainly get it.

Sixty Years and Counting

Home Hardware's 60th anniversary is worth celebrating because the model still works. In a retail landscape where independent stores are disappearing, a thousand-plus locally owned hardware stores are still thriving across Canada. That says something about the value of knowing your customer by name, standing behind what you sell, and being part of the community you serve — not just doing business in it.

We're proud to be dealer-owned, locally run, and part of this cooperative. Thanks to everyone who's walked through our doors over the past 34 years. Here's to the next sixty — for Home Hardware and for us.