Family-owned hardware store closing after 78 years
LANCASTER, Ohio (WCMH) – After more than seven decades in business, a Lancaster hardware store is closing its doors.
It’s the end of an era for Slater’s Hardware, which first opened in 1946. Since its start, the store has prided itself on getting to know customers and helping them with whatever they need, big or small.
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“The first thing that comes to mind is family,” Steve Slater, one of the store’s current owners, said. “We work with family. We see each other every day, but also we have our customers who are like family to us.”
It’s the relationships they’ve created that made this week hard. In addition to the handy advice, there have been hugs.
“Everyone has a little story they can tell us what happened in their life and how Slater’s affected them so that’s really important,” Lou Ann Slater Weisenstein, one of the store’s other current owners, said.
The store announced on Tuesday it is closing at the end of February. Weisenstein and Slater own the store with other relatives. The business was started by their grandmother. The building the store is now in was built by their grandfather.
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“This is the ending of a journey that has taken a long time, but it seems to have happened in a flash,” Weisenstein said. “Being here our whole life, our children grew up here, too; all of them have worked at the hardware store.”
Over the years, the store has come to also offer locksmith services, hobby supplies, strongman equipment, and more. Weisenstein and Slater said a combination of the challenges of running a small business and moving on to new chapters in life led to the difficult call to close.
“I thought it was the worst decision we’ve ever made, but it’s the happiest decision we’ve ever made, too,” Weisenstein said. “It is time for me to retire and to find some other avenues and some other adventures in my life with my family, but not with Slater’s hardware. We will miss everybody.”
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The locksmith and strongman services will still be in the community, but not at the hardware store. Slater’s is holding a community get-together on Jan. 26 and 27. The store will officially close at the end of February.
The owners’ full announcement to the community can be read here.
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