So for the last six years I have been working at a local hardware store in my area. I've had just about every job you can imagine, doing everything from running the register, to stocking shelves, to ordering, to customer service. Nowadays, I take my part in managing the store and helping out in the daily business operations of the store. We are a small business and it sure takes a lot to keep small businesses afloat in today's economy. There have been other stores in our vicinity that have closed for numerous reasons, yet we have remained strong over the years. It takes a lot to run a hardware store and it takes a good group of people to do it. In the next paragraphs I will explain what it would take to open a hardware store in the wonderful state of Massachusetts. The first and most important thing about a hardware store is location. You wouldn't open a hardware store in the middle of nowhere on a side street where no one goes. It just doesn't make sense; no one would ever know you were in that place in the first place. You also want to find an area that is primarily made up of lower-middle class income families. As strange as it is to say, your target market is the lower middle class, specifically people between the ages of 22 and 70. These are the people who engage in small DIY projects around the house, or if their toilet breaks, they will go to the hardware store to fix it instead of calling a plumber. If you open a hardware store in a place like Weston or Sudbury (two towns made up of mostly upper-middle class residents and with the two highest median incomes in the state). That's because these people would rather hire someone like a general contractor...... middle of paper......er at the hardware store to use that coupon. In my opinion it was an ingenious idea, just because you are using local resources to do business. Despite all the things I've mentioned, there's a lot more that goes into keeping a hardware store in business and staying afloat 11 hours a day they're open, seven days a week, 360 days a year. I could probably write an entire book on the different aspects you need to keep up to date with in the store, such as stock/order information, the point of sale system, deliveries, cleaning the floors, counting the cash registers correctly... the list could go on forever. It's an endless cycle when it comes down to it, but you have to stay in tune. The moment you fall behind in hardware (for any small business), is when you are most vulnerable to the decline of your business.