Issue date: November 24, 1999
By BUD WENDELL
How has a family-owned hardware company prospered for 75 years on Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park where openings and closings of stores seem to take place almost daily in this rapidly changing community?
According to Bob Ryan and Susie Ryan Lorist, a brother-and-sister team who run the Menlo Park Hardware Company, it's happened the old-fashioned way: building sales by helping their customers solve problems and watching every penny of cost.
They say they learned these lessons from their aunt and uncle, Edith and William Ryan, who founded the business in 1924 with W.G. Aspinall, of Ceres, California, and from their father, Dom Ryan, who took over the business in the mid-1950s and ran it until he died in 1989.
Before coming to Menlo Park, Mr. and Mrs. William Ryan lived in Grass Valley where he was employed in a hardware store.
Based on the Ryan family records, the story of Menlo Park Hardware began on June 15, 1924, when Mr. and Mrs. Ryan and Mr. Aspinall opened the store, originally named Aspinall and Ryan, at the corner of Santa Cruz and El Camino Real.
Four years later, as the business grew, Mr. Ryan's brother Dom -- an avid hunter, cowboy, building inspector and horse-and-wagon deliveryman -- came from Sacramento to help, and the store added more space next door.
Many of their customers were gardeners on the big estates in the area.
In 1933, the owners terminated the partnership because Mr. Aspinall lived near Fresno and it was difficult to maintain involvement in a Menlo Park store. The Ryans took full ownership, and the store's name was changed to Menlo Park Hardware.
The Depression years and World War II were difficult, but the Ryans had the savvy to survive escalating accounts receivable, product shortages, and the departure of many customers for military service. "They always seemed to make it," says Mrs. Lorist, as she recounts the history.
After the war, population mushroomed and the business regained its footing, returning to growth and prosperity.
In 1951, the store moved to its present address at 700 Santa Cruz Ave., just about where the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church once stood.
There was still a lot of farming in the area, and Dom plowed various fields after work.
The arrival of retail credit cards in the late 1960s was a challenge for the cash-focused Ryans. They resisted them for a while, but later decided to bend to their customers' new way of paying for their products.
The product mix changed frequently with customer demand. "For example," Mrs. Lorist says, "white goods, including refrigerators, stoves, washing machines and dryers, were dropped as were sporting firearms, although family members were hunters."
In the early 1980s, when their main supplier went out of business, the store owners affiliated with ACE Hardware Corporation, the big supply house. This move enabled Menlo Hardware to expand its product mix and remain competitive. ACE carries over 65,000 items in its warehouse, and Menlo Hardware draws on about 35,000 of them, says Mrs. Lorist.
Today, Mr. Ryan and Mrs. Lorist own and manage the company, having bought the shares of their four siblings. One is a career counselor in San Diego; another is a speech therapist in Ferndale; a third married a rice and walnut farmer in the Sacramento Valley; and the fourth works for the Santa Clara Water District.
Mrs. Lorist's husband Franz is a watchmaker nearby in Menlo Park.
Both sister and brother returned to the store after they graduated from college. Mrs. Lorist graduated from Chico State University, majoring in home economics; Mr. Ryan graduated from University of California, Davis, with a degree in agribusiness.
Mr. Ryan and Mrs. Lorist divide the responsibility of running the business: he is president; she is vice president. In fact, they've drawn an imaginary line down the middle of the sales floor. Mrs. Lorist takes the left side, which includes housewares; and Mr. Ryan runs the right side, where hardware, tools and related items are displayed. Both are on the floor helping customers for a large part of each day.
They lease the 8,000-square-foot store, which has 23 product aisles. They have worked there since they were young -- Mr. Ryan was 12, but Mrs. Lorist and her sisters weren't allowed to start there until they were 15.
"If you're Dom Ryan's kid, you had to work in the hardware store," explains Mrs. Lorist. "When I came here after college, I worked in the office, but when I realized that's not where the action is, I asked to work on the floor and started in housewares." Now she splits her time between the business office and the sales aisles.
On a recent busy day, she also was acting as chief telephone operator, handling non-stop calls, directing sales people, and handling a customer request to return a five-year-old decorated teapot that had a loose handle and leaked water from the lid. (In the hardware version of Nordstrom, she gently offered a $5 rebate for good will).
In addition, she supervises employee scheduling, and counts the money and takes it to the bank. He buys the products and manages the computerized inventory system.
Do they get along as co-managers and owners? "We've been working together since 1979, so yeah, it's smooth now," says Mrs. Lorist. "We can pretty much laugh about the things we don't agree on, such as who opens the store in the morning and who closes it. We both like to have Sundays off."
What do they like about running a hardware store? They both say helping customers provides the greatest satisfaction.
"The area is full of ambitious people, who are always doing something," Mr. Ryan points out. "They have their projects that they want to get done. We help them if they want to put something together.
"There's a lot of variety," he says. "Nothing's the same, that's for sure."
What he doesn't like is that it's hard to get away sometimes. While he and his sister work five days a week, the store is open seven days, and they're always on call.
Mrs. Lorist says she likes getting to know customers. "We sell stuff for everyday life. I like the fact that you're a fixer-upper or a creative person. I like the fact that people here are doers, action people, whether its building a model of an old California mission with their fourth-graders for a school project, or making sure their suitcase isn't going to fly open. Each one has a different challenge."
Though she says she never wanted to be a teacher, she finds she's teaching more and more. "I can't believe the number of people who don't know what a molly bolt or a toggle bolt is," she says.
One of the least satisfying aspects of the business is counting the money, making out the bank deposits and going to the bank, she says. "It's too monotonous for me. I delegate it whenever I can."
Menlo Park Hardware has nine departments -- cleaning and painting; tools; electrical; plumbing and heating; hardware; housewares; garden and outdoor living; auto supplies; and Christmas notions and office supplies. It carries "about 30,000 individual items," she says.
The store has thousands of customers, they say, who come from communities ranging from San Carlos to Cupertino. And sometimes far beyond. Among five customers recently interviewed by this reporter, one is an antique-restorer from Los Angeles who buys supplies when he's working nearby.
Customer comments underscore the user-friendly nature of Menlo Park Hardware. "I've been a customer for about 25 years," said Monte Chisholm of Menlo Park, "and I come here because I can always ask questions and get answers, which is fairly nice. Other places you go in, and there isn't anyone there to help me. You waste a lot of time that way."
Rene Sagahon, the Los Angeles antique man, said, "I can find lots of things here, and I need supplies on the spot to restore some of the pieces I find."
A customer from Mountain View, Irene Kimmell, was browsing through the housewares aisles and said: "I shop here often and I spend a lot of money here. They have a good selection of things for the house."
Evelyn Callas shops at Menlo Hardware once or twice a year because it has things she can't find other places. "I've been shopping here off and on for 40 years, I guess. Today, I'm looking for wooden chopping bowls."
Another long-time customer, Joe Lambert of Palo Alto, was looking for screws. "We have some new drawers in the kitchen. My wife and I are fixing them. I'm the errand boy. This is my second trip here, because I got the wrong size. I shop here because it's convenient."
The store is the only hardware store in Menlo Park, but to the owners, there seems to be competitors everywhere, since they handle so many different items. Mrs. Lorist gives examples: "McWhorters sells scotch tape; so do we. Draeger's sells housewares; so do we. In some respects, almost every other store is a competitor. In other ways, television, magazines and mail order provide competition. And now the Internet is going to be a competitor." She said Menlo Park Hardware would have a presence on the Internet next year.
Westside Hardware, the last Menlo Park competitor, went out of business last year. "We tried to buy them about 1987, but we were outbid," she says. "We miss them, because we could trade merchandise, and refer our customers to them if they carried products we didn't. It was a nice complement."
The business is going well, Mrs. Lorist says, although one of the difficult challenges is finding qualified employees. There are eight full-time people and 12 part-timers. The employees, including two from the closed Westside Hardware, seem up-beat and genuinely interested in what they're doing.
"I love it here," says Christine Basinger, who has been in the hardware business for 20 to 25 years.
Beverly Benz mentions the friendly atmosphere of the store. People tell her: "Don't close this store; we'll miss it." She describes it as "an old-fashioned hardware store."
Don Sumner, a former graphics artist at SRI and Lockheed's Missile Systems Division in Sunnyvale, says he "loves it here." He works at the store three days a week, and more during the Christmas season, mixing paint (sometimes by eye with his graphics expertise), stocking shelves, and putting in orders for supplies.
Mike McNulty, a seven-year employee, explains that he's "insatiably curious" and working there satisfies his curiosity. "People have problems ranging from a burned pot to wiring a house, and I love learning all this stuff," he says. "In the course of a day, I do almost everything, including mopping the floors, although I'm in charge of the electrical department."
Will the business continue to remain in the family? Mrs. Lorist points to her two grandchildren-by-marriage, nine nieces and nephews, all of whom have worked in the store during vacations and holidays, and even four grandnieces and nephews. And with some vigor, she emphasizes that she's less than 50 years old and her brother is five years younger. So, it appears that the firm will be in family hands for a good while.
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