110-year-old Home Depot rival closes

Before big-box retailers, astir communities had a section hardware store.

In galore cases, these stores served arsenic a assemblage hub, selling everything from gathering supplies and hardware to grills and immoderate a homeowner mightiness request that wasn't readily disposable elsewhere.

These stores inactive person a role, according to GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders, but it's a shrinking one. He noted that consumers spell to big-box stores for ample projects, but their section hardware stores for smaller projects.

“The broader information present is that Home Depot does champion for large standard betterment tasks and large DIY jobs and is simply a large destination for consumers undertaking specified work,” Saunders told the Associated Press. “Unfortunately, the marketplace did not play shot implicit the last 4th with the fig of projects undertaken down by 1.5%, mostly driven by a crisp diminution successful bigger summons projects, specified arsenic afloat remodels.”

That's a tiny ray of sunshine, but it has not stopped section hardware retailers, including Montreal's 110-year-old BMR Quincaillerie Notre-Dame de St-Henri, from closing.

Quincaillerie Notre-Dame volition adjacent due to the fact that its owners can't find a purchaser to support it successful operation. That's partially due to the fact that user behaviour has shifted.

"The percent of hardware stores that are genuinely autarkic (mom‑and‑pop style) has dropped implicit the decades, from 47% successful 1992 down to 42% by 2018," reported The Handbuilt City.

These stores besides look the situation that forced Quincaillerie Notre-Dame to close, namely, the deficiency of an heir to instrumentality implicit the business.

"The mean autarkic hardware retail store proprietor — the vicinity Joe making your keys oregon selling you overgarment — is turning 60 and his children are not rushing to instrumentality implicit the store," the North American Retail Hardware Association (NARHA) told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

That's thing the commercialized relation wants to correct.

“It is simply a immense contented we are focused on,” said Scott Wright, enforcement manager of the Leadership Institute for NRHA. “Many of those retailers don’t person a succession program for passing that down to the adjacent procreation oregon idiosyncratic wrong the company."

Home Depot dominated the home-improvement assemblage with 28% of the marketplace successful 2025, with Lowe’s capturing 17% of the marketplace and Amazon generating 11% of the sector’s sales, according to the Numerator Home Improvement Tracker.

The "big three" retailers captured astir 56% of sales, portion galore smaller chains and retailers struggled to make capable income to enactment successful business.