California Hardware history

By William Burg Photos courtesy of the Center for Sacramento History In 1910, Sacramento was a city on the edge of change.

Founder, Herman Weishaupt, experienced retail for the first time, as an employee of Sears Roebuck and Co. in 1927.

42 In The Modern Hardware Store (1929), Dipman advised the “sales engineer” to place novelties in conspicuous locations and staples in less prominent places.

Since 1931, Orchard Supply Hardware has maintained its strategy of providing a broad merchandise selection, outstanding service, convenient, well organized stores and fair everyday pricing, encouraging its customers to perceive Orchard as the primary destination for their "fix-it" needs.

16, 1935, Raley’s has grown extensively and is a rich part of

Since 1950 Fullerton Hardware has been helping customers find solutions to their home improvement projects.

KCRA's first broadcast took place in 1955 at the California State Fair.

In 1957 – 11 years after the opening of the area’s first shopping center, Town and Country Village – Arden Fair Mall on Arden Way emerged within a still considerably rural area where farm animals and a wide variety of wildlife roamed on open land.

Burger Chef. a technological wonder of a chain restaurant, opened In 1958 with the capacity to pump out burgers faster than even McDonald’s could: 800 per hour, via a conveyer broiler.

The Franquinhas have been selling hardware on Metropolitan Avenue in North Brooklyn since 1962.

The company was supported by these seven stores when W.R. Grace & Co. purchased Orchard Supply from its original owners in 1979.

Jenkins spent 15 years at Gemco learning the retail trade and then was hired as president and chief operating officer of a 107-unit chain of drug stores operated by Seattle-based Pay 'N Save Stores in 1985.

Orchard Supply was a 19-store company by July 1986, when Santa Monica-based Wickes Companies, Inc. acquired the retailer from W.R. Grace & Co.

Coming off of $255 million in sales in 1988, Orchard Supply generated $280 million in sales during the year of the leveraged buyout.

In June 1989, Jenkins and other Orchard Supply management sought to restore the retailer's independence, enlisting the help of a limited partnership organized by the Los Angeles-based investment firm of Freeman, Spogli & Co.

As the company set forth, the expansion projections announced by Jenkins in 1990 were met nearly precisely.

By 1992, Orchard Supply's distribution center in San Jose had become too small to service the company's pressing need to keep its stores' shelves fully stocked.

By the end of 1994, 14 new stores had been added to the Orchard Supply chain, lifting sales for the year to $441.6 million and net income to more than $1 million.

Jenkins was envisioning a 50-unit Orchard Supply chain by 1995.

Courtesy Center for Sacramento History, Frank Christy Collection, 1998/722/1417.

In those early days and until about 1999, San Diego Hardware sold a wide selection of typical and hard-to-find hardware store items.

In 2000 Fullerton Hardware joined Ace Hardware, a buying cooperative owned entirely by independent dealers.

See also Hannah Ellis-Peterson, “Theaster Gates on the Nuts and Bolts of Life – All 30,000 of Them,” The Guardian (July 14, 2016). Gates proposes: “it is possible that the hardware store is functioning more like a botánica for the shaping of the material world than it is a tool shed.