12
Fall 2013 •
Hardlines
Strategies
RETAILER FEATURE
we should buy,” says Jerry. “We got a lot
of great deals and bought a lot of the Blish-
Mize RMS displays to help us get started.
It was all a bit overwhelming since we’d
never been to a Buying Market before.”
As soon as truckloads of inventory
arrived, the Pierces once again relied on the
help of Blish-Mize to set the flow of cat-
egories throughout the store.
With the team from Blish-Mize on hand
to set the store, the Pierces, along with the
store’s new staff that included their son
Jordan and office manager Christina Foutch,
had a different challenge to face: finding a
way to accommodate customers anxious to
buy hardware. Even before the store was
open, while workers were still finishing up
the renovations and filling the gondolas with
merchandise, customers were walking in the
door and asking for items they needed.
“While we were still setting up the store,
customers would walk in and want to buy
products,” says Foutch. “Since our POS
system wasn’t set up yet, we had to hand-
write a lot of tickets.”
New and Improved
In fact, Pierce’s philosophy of running his
business is centered around listening to his
customers. That approach allowed him to
take a different path than his predecessor,
which was evident to any shopper attending
the grand opening of J.P. Lumber in July
of 2012. While the lumberyard previously
occupying the space focused primarily on
lumber, with only a small offering of build-
er’s hardware in the retail space, J.P. Lumber
covered all the core categories.
Thanks to the wide selection of products
available from Blish-Mize, the Pierces are
able to meet customer requests quickly.
One good example is how they responded
to their customers’ requests for a strong
paint department.
The Pierces found the Pratt & Lambert
line of paint from Blish-Mize was a per-
fect solution for their store’s needs. They
updated the store’s color matching system
over an older system left by the store’s
previous owner. Pratt & Lambert also
provided them with an assortment that
would fit their needs for a small-town cus-
tomer base.
“Pratt & Lambert understood the needs
of our store, and our customers love the
paint,” says Foutch.
In addition to paint, fasteners are a
strong category now that the store has
a complete line of Hillman products the
Pierces purchased at the Buying Market.
While Jerry still spends most of his time
out on the jobsite with the pump business,
Suzanne, Jordan, Foutch, store manager
The building that currently houses J.P. Lumber had been a lumberyard in the community for
nearly 100 years. After a remodel, the Pierces reopened it under their own name in 2012.
