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How a Local Small Business Outlasted the Big Box Store

By Ann Barr

This is such an inspiring story, especially for small businesses that have felt threatened for so many years by big box discount stores.

In Brattleboro, Vermont, a Home Depot set up shop across the street from the Fireside True Value hardware store.  Owner Wayne St. John knew it would probably take some of his customers away.

He and his brothers, who have operated their store for 35 years, had heard the stories about big box stores and their low prices driving competitors into the ground.

Four years later, it is Fireside True Value that is still standing and the Home Depot store that is closing.

How did this local small business outlast the big box store?  They stuck to doing what they do best.  And it paid off.

Public Enemy?

Home Depot was considered a public enemy before it even opened the store in a former Ames' department store one and a half miles from downtown.

BrattPower, a citizens' group, fought to keep the home improvement retailer out, saying its bargain prices and sheer size would take business away from local businesses.

Small by Home Depot standards at 60,000 square feet, it was sandwiched in between two other Home Depots - one across the river in Keene, N.H., the other in nearby Greenfield, Mass. - within a 30-minute drive.

Fireside True Value store owner Wayne St. John said:

"I've heard a lot of customers come in and say:  "You guys put them under."

"We have seen big box stores defeated in over 200 communities in the last two years," said Stacy Mitchell, author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent

Businesses.

How to Win Against the Competition 

How A Local Small Business pg1  pg2   PRINT WORD DOCUMENT

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