Page 6 - BusinessWest January 20, 2025

“There’s all kinds of competition, and that competition has changed over the years.”
“We have plenty of them ... it hasn’t really snowed in two years,” he said with a voice that blended frustration with hard reality and an inability to do anything about it. “Let’s hope that changes this winter.”
Weather is just one of the myriad issues and challenges con- fronting those in the hardware business, a sector that, like many others in retail, has undergone tremendous change over the past few decades, in everything from the scope and nature of the com- petition — Sam Carr didn’t have Home Depot, Walmart, or Tractor Supply to contend with — to how business is done and what is sold or rented, from baby chicks in the spring to bounce houses.
“There’s all kinds of competition, and that competition has changed over the years,” he explained. “When I first came back, Sears was the big competitor, and that’s certainly evolved. Mean- while, online is a huge competitor, Home Depot, Walmart, local chains — Rocky’s and Aubuchon — and the independents; there are several of them in the Berkshires.”
Like all Pittsfield-based businesses, this one had to cope with the downsizing of GE in the early ’90s and the huge impact it had, and still has, on the city’s central business district. And, like all retail businesses, this one faces the challenge of finding enough tal- ent for its stores.
Before getting to all that, let’s go back to the beginning.
Calvin Coolidge was patrolling the White House when Sam Carr, a North Adams native who was working for someone else in the hardware sector, decided to go into business for himself. He started in a storefront just a few blocks down North Street, and eventually moved his venture into what had been a Sears Roebuck location, and before that a car dealership, at 547 North St., and the Carr name has been over the door ever since.
In 1962, Marshall Raser, who was already in the hardware busi- ness in Quincy with his brothers, met Sam Carr and decided to expand, if you will, into the Berkshires.
“My dad bought Carr Hardware, his brothers stayed in Quincy, and he ran Carr Hardware; together, they were all partners,” Raser noted, adding that the expansion into other Berkshire-area commu- nities began in the ’80s with locations in Lee and Great Barrington.
Eventually, what would become a chain had a presence in North Adams as well, before the venture moved into other area markets. Including Avon in 2019, a Connecticut expansion that certainly
wasn’t planned.
“I went in to buy their fixtures, and I walked out with the keys,”
he said, referring to a store that was closing its doors, only to open again with a new name over the door. The search for fixtures was prompted by Carr’s purchase of an independent store in Longmead- ow and the need to relocate it to make way for a Big Y expansion,
a move that brought the chain to Enfield, Conn., a store that would close after seven years of operation.
Nailing It Down
As he talked about the company’s past expansion efforts — and also what might happen in the future — Raser referenced the attri- tion rate in this business, which has grown steadily higher over the years, even within his own family; indeed, in addition to the Enfield store, which suffered from a poor location, a store in Great Bar- rington operated by his cousins eventually failed, to be replaced by one opened by Bart and Marshall Raser.
To survive and thrive these days, hardware ventures need sev- eral key ingredients, he said, starting with size. Indeed, chains have an enormous advantage over single, standalone stores when it comes to buying power and economies of scale, Raser said, adding that this is one reason why he is continually looking for expansion opportunities.
Meanwhile, a diverse portfolio of products and services is anoth- er must, he noted, adding that the company’s equipment- and event- rental business is a good example of such diversity.
“Rental is an important part of our business now,” he said. “If you had told my dad or Sam Carr that we would be renting bounce houses and cotton-candy machines, they’d think we were crazy, but it’s a great part of our business.”
The same can be said for small-engine repair and even the sale of chickens, which started in three of the stores several years ago and remains brisk.
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