Finkle's
hardware in Lambertville, started as scrapyard, survives test of time
Finkle's in Lambertville calls itself
''The world's must unusual ''hardware' store' and a tour of three of its four
buildings lends weight to the claim. Founder Joseph Finkle's grandson is
learning the ropes and his mom is store president.
Renée Kiriluk-Hill/Hunterdon Democrat
By Renée Kiriluk-Hill/Hunterdon Democrat
Email the author
on July 01, 2013 at 6:25 PM, updated July 02, 2013 at 10:21 AM
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LAMBERTVILLE — Jos. Finkle & Son looks like the old-fashioned
hardware store it is, complete with a hand-written sign on the door that tells
you to ask for "Sven" if you're interested in a whole-house
generator.
Inside, customers
reach for a manila tag number when there's a line, which is common. Customers
who know what they want, and where it is, can get it themselves. It's not
unusual to pass a regular in the stockroom.
But most get a
number and wait patiently for one-on-one service. It's a model that has kept
the hardware store/industrial supply house in business for four generations,
and this is a place where things are fixed only when broken.
Finkle's was
founded in 1917 by Russian immigrant Joseph Finkle, who fled his homeland at
the turn of the century and landed in Lambertville after stops in New York and
Trenton. It started as a scrap business, not a bad business to be in when the
country was at war and metal was scarce.
View
full sizeBob Crane of Pittstown looks on as junk dealer
Joe Finkle of Lambertville and on e of his men cut up farm machinry that was no
longer useful to serve in the war effort.
"He used to go
around the county and collect scraps, or people would sell him scraps,"
says granddaughter Rachel Finkle, who now runs what is still very much a family
business.
The scrapyard was
where the hardware store now fills a narrow, deep lot adjacent to the Delaware
& Raritan Canal towpath. "He used to sit in the front, around a
pot-bellied stove on an elevated platform, and watch things go on," says
Rachel.
During the Great Depression, she says, he bought some close-out stock, starting
the "transition from scrapyard to supply house." His son, Abe,
started working in the family business as a child, was responsible for multiple
expansions, and was known to a good number of the customers who still frequent
the store — he worked there until his death at age 83 in 1994.
The extended family
today owns the hardware store on Coryell Street and, across the street from it,
the old Strand Theater — now a plumbing warehouse — and the building next to
it, holding offices, the lighting store and more warehouse space. Across the
canal is the gravel parking lot and another warehouse.
Family members who
aren't directly involved with the store haven't pressured to sell the land,
Rachel says, adding, "The closeness and generosity of the older
generations" has allowed the business to avoid succession issues common to
multi-generational businesses.
Abe wasn't an only
child and neither is Rachel. Abe's nephew Richard worked in the business for 25
years, retiring in 2003. Rachel said she is the only one in her generation
still interested in running the business, which she does today with husband
Sven Helmer and about a dozen other employees.
Several have been
there longer than the 22 years she has. "When you ask for help, you don't
get a blank stare," she says. Only a few have been there five or fewer
years, and all of them work in the warehouse or office, except for eldest child
Jonah Helmer, 14, who is working at Finkle's this summer and will start high
school in the fall.
The fourth generation to work in the store, he's learning the business from the
ground up. One of his first tasks, he says, was to tack thin strips of plastic
to remind anyone passing through a low doorway into one stockroom area to duck.
Jonah also waits on
customers — often turning to longtime employees for help solving a
do-it-yourself query. He's an enthusiastic learner, that's his personality
type," says his mom. "It's what I look for in an employee. It's what
you look for in a kid, a student. You don't always get it."
Jonah names the
other employees as the best part of working here. Second is working in his
family's business. He's trying to show fellow employees his good side, after
years of coming here just to "cause trouble." His favorite trick as a
child was building masking tape "spider webs" to block an aisle in
the warehouse.
Finkle's has
attracted more than a local following. It was voted Best Hardware Store by
Philadelphia Magazine in 2009. And it was the first hardware store to be selected for Popular Mechanics magazine's new “Hardware
Store We Love” page last year.
How does a family
hardware store stay in business today? This one wouldn't, Rachel says, without
the supply company side. "This is certainly not something you'd find in a
normal hardware store," she says from the "wire room" stocked
with large spools of electrical wire.
Electrical is
Finkle's dominant category, thanks to a large and loyal cadre of electricians
from both sides of the Delaware River. The lighting store is an outgrowth of
that business, says Rachel, because "a lot of electricians don't want to
choose the lighting for their customers," so they send them to the store
to pick their own. While customers decide the inventory — Rachel says that some
items, such as a specialty light bulb, might have just one buyer — so do the
employees.
The electrical
department expansion came about because of Tucker Griffiths. He's in his 70s
and works three days weekly. "Tucker almost single-handedly grew our
electrical business," says Rachel, encouraged by the
"non-corporate" structure in which "you can be your own
person," and gain "a sense of ownership" in this workplace. Her
husband's background in carpentry was the impetus for the depth of selection in
door and cabinet hardware.
"We're a real
cast of characters here," says Rachel, laughing. "I order the
(structural) steel" and fireplace-related stock. "Our bread and
butter is the builders, contractors, maintenance trades," says Rachel,
allowing Finkle's to "also serve as the local hardware store."
The competitive pressure "gets greater and greater," she
acknowledges, but says the rewards outweigh them. On this day she passes her
husband and son in the aisles at work, along with friends old and new.
On one trip through
a warehouse she passes John Pilawski, maintenance supervisor at The
Lambertville Station Inn and restaurant. He had ducked into the warehouse to
grab a needed part from stock. "If you know where it is, you just go and
get it," he says. "I know where a lot of stuff is after 15
years" at the Station. "But there's still a lot of things I have to
ask for."
He pops in at least
once daily, he says. "I walk down the canal. It's friendly. Everybody
knows you. It's nice, there aren't many small stores left today."
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