Making Hardware Easy : Male Traditions Aside, Big Chains and Local Stores Are Retooling Their Operations to Attract Female Do-It-Yourselfers

ORANGE —  Angy Smith admits that her efforts to “soften” hardware stores won’t go over well with all her customers.

As manager of the tile and floor covering aisles at Home Depot’s warehouse store in Orange, Smith knows there are macho types out there who view her as an interloper hell-bent on destroying one of the last bastions of male dominance.

“It’s a pretty aisle,” Smith, 31, said of her newly renovated section. “But it’s still a hardware aisle. We’re never going to be frilly because we’re a warehouse.”

But hardware aisles are indeed changing as national chains and mom-and-pop hardware stores scramble to draw more women in the front door.

Operators are betting that the kinder, gentler approach to hardware also will play well with men who wouldn’t know a crescent wrench from crescent roll.

Americans will spend an estimated $127.5 billion at hardware and home improvement stores in 1995, according to the Indianapolis-based National Retail Hardware Assn.

The hardware and home improvement industry anticipates an 8% annual compound growth rate for the five-year period ending in 1998, with Americans responding to a tight economy by spending more time and money on their “castles.”

Women cast a deciding vote in at least 73% of every consumer purchase made, said Jann Leeming, publisher of About Women Inc., a Boston-based market research firm. So it stands to reason that women are increasingly likely to be calling the shots at hardware and home improvement stores.

Home Depot figures that about half of its customers are women--a decided change from the old days when men were clearly king of the hardware aisles, said Bill Griffin, whose grandfather opened Griffin Hardware on 1st Street in Santa Ana in 1953.

For decades, Griffin said, women who entered hardware stores usually were acting as couriers for husbands who were hip deep in a home improvement project.

“They’d come in clutching a list that the guy put together and say, ‘I don’t know what it is, but he needs it fast,”’ Griffin said.

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Increasingly, Griffin said, women aren’t waiting for husbands to handle home improvement projects. And, as more women become heads of households, they are more likely to be patching holes in walls, re-tiling floors or installing ceiling fans.

“We know from anecdotal evidence that women are usually the ones to start a home improvement project,” said Ellen Hackney, National Retail Hardware Assn. spokeswoman. “And we know they have a major influence on how a project is carried out.”

But, while it may sound sexist, hardware store operators agree that most women still aren’t as comfortable as men when it comes to roaming the aisles of hardware stores.

“They might come in the front door together, but they usually split up--and he heads for the tool section,” Smith said.

Societal stereotyping gets the blame: Dads who know their way around a tool bench are more likely to pass along their handyman tips to junior rather than to a daughter. And, while boys are invited to tag along during hardware store trips, little girls still are more likely to accompany mom to grocery and department stores.

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Home Depot began to soften its hard edges after extensive customer interviews showed that many women were uncomfortable with the inherently noisy nature of the Atlanta-based chain’s massive warehouse-style stores.

On a recent afternoon, for example, a woman pushing a shopping cart to the check-out counter at Home Depot’s Orange store played a short but frustrating game of chicken with a forklift operator.

That shouldn’t happen during peak hours, Smith said, because forklifts have been banned from the sales floor when the store is busiest. Employees also have been directed to curtail annoying in-store pages that set shoppers’ heads spinning.

Home Depot is widening some aisles and taking products out of their boxes to show shoppers what they look like when fully assembled. Each move is in response to specific complaints voiced by female shoppers.

“This is the strongest ‘women aisle’ in the store,” Smith said, as she walked down the renovated tile and floor covering aisle, with its stronger lighting and new displays. “No woman would be afraid to shop here.”

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HomeBase Inc., the Irvine-based warehouse-style operator, is adding extensive showrooms to give consumers--increasingly, they are women, often with children and husband in tow--ideas on how to remodel kitchens and baths. HomeBase also is strengthening its garden shop offerings in a bid to draw a wider array of shoppers.

“The tradition or mythology was that dad ran down to the hardware store on Saturday morning,” said HomeBase Executive Vice President Mark Baker. “But a significant part of our population is women, and they’re making decisions.”

When Griffin Ace Hardware, the fourth-generation business in Santa Ana, opened a store recently in Del Mar, it changed its product mix to match women’s needs.

That new store in Northern San Diego County offers a wider selection of kitchen and home products that upscale residents demand--and that’s what passersby see in the store’s display windows.

“We put the housewares, the more impulsive buys, in the front window because we want to pull more women in here,” said Shannon Griffin Carney, 32, one of two Griffin daughters now running the company stores. “We’re in a shopping center that caters largely to women with children, so we try to make our store more attractive to them.”

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Hardware operators have always divided their do-it-yourself, or DIY, customers into two classes--handymen who know exactly which widget they want and first-timers who tremble at the thought of fixing a leaky faucet or replacing a light switch that’s failed.

HomeBase executives know that--regardless of their sex--the DIY crowd needs lots of hand-holding. But Baker said that the added expense of counseling fledgling carpenters and plumbers pays dividends.

“‘We need to make them comfortable when they come in to buy the 79-cent part, because, once that comfort level rises, we’ll be selling them something that costs $79.”

Despite their growing numbers, women still tend to view hardware stores from a different perspective than do men.

When executives at one Midwest hardware store chain asked men and women to talk about the chain’s strengths and weaknesses, “the different ways that men and women saw the stores was no less than amazing,” said Joel Stevens, marketing manager for Oakbrook, Ill.-based Ace Hardware Corp., the hardware wholesaler.

Women in focus groups spoke in incredible detail about the chain’s service levels, Stevens said. But men, who know their way around the stores, spoke of selection and store layout--with nary a mention of service.

Carney links that worldview to the fact that “men are willing to look around, to browse and find what they want . . . women don’t have the time--they demand service because they’re usually in more of a hurry.”

Ask men to talk about grocery stores, hardware veterans said, and the situation would be reversed.

“My husband comes back from two hours at the grocery store and he’s cursing because he can’t find anything,” Carney said with a laugh.

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Judith Langer, a New York-based market researcher who studies consumer shopping habits, said that male-dominated retail stores must learn to treat women as “intelligent, but not as well-informed as some men on some things. You should never treat them as ignorant.”

That’s sound advice, said Retail Hardware Assn. spokeswoman Hackney. Consumer surveys consistently show that women are put off by salesmen who talk down to them.

“Women are willing to admit that they’re dumb about certain things,” Hackney said, “but what we don’t want is people talking to us like we’re stupid.”

Joyce Jackson, who recently spent $15,000 at HomeBase to remodel her kitchen, suspects that most women aren’t all that interested in the performance specifications that seem to enthrall many guys.

“I’d rather concentrate on the goal line--getting the project done,” Jackson said. “Women are more practical, more functional, I think . . . and some people tend to try and overwhelm you with trivia, with their expertise.”

Hardware professionals also note that, despite the growing number of women tackling do-it-yourself projects, hardware stores remain the special domain of men.

“For a lot of guys, it’s still their special place to go and get away from the home for a while,” Carney said. “They like it and want it to stay that way.

“But if women come in for a quarter-inch drill, they’ll get it and get out,” Carney said. “They’re far less likely to buy tools on impulse like men. And it takes a lot more to get them to browse, to just come on in and have a look.”

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The Soft Shell

SHOWROOMS: HomeBase is adding glitzy showrooms in the front. Some stores have computer-aided design systems to show customers the finished product.

HOW-TO PAMPHLETS: Instructions and in-store demonstrations are more common. Consumers sit on benches and watch experts tile a floor or install a ceiling fan.

DISPLAYS: HomeBase and Home Depot both are adding more displays--taking lights, faucets and shelving units out of their boxes and assembling them.

AISLES: Stores have widened aisles to give customers room to put rugs down on the floor next to drapes to match colors. They’re adding better lighting.

GARDEN SHOP: HomeBase has pumped up its garden shop, hoping women will pass through the hardware on the way to the plants.

FORKLIFT BAN: Home Depot has banned forklifts during peak hours and asked its staff to cut back on public address pages that irritate many women (and, probably, many men).

STAFFING: More women are on the sales floor. Long a male-dominated field, hardware sales is gradually changing.

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The Hard Sell

Hardware and home improvement industry sales are expected to pass the $150-billion mark by 1998. Actual and projected sales, in billions*: (see newspaper for chart)

* Projected Source: National Retail Hardware Assn.

Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times

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Who’s Fixing It

Do-it-yourself projects done by men vs. women as heads of the household:

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Men Installed carpeting 17% 17% 8% 12% Refinished furniture 45 39 41 42 Installed shelving, organizers 74 68 13 21 Built a patio 59 44 3 5 Painted home exterior 53 48 17 19 Painted interior of home 48 44 38 39 Wallpapered a room 28 31 51 51

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Who’s Buying It

Percent of purchases for each category of home improvement products:

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Men Women Hardware 71% 28% Electrical/lighting 72 27 Power tools 78 20 Heating/ventilation/ air-conditioning 63 36 Paint/equipment 64 35 Lumber 87 12 Plumbing 76 23 Wall/window/floor coverings 38 61 Door/window/millwork 77 22 Lawn and garden 67 32 Kitchen/bath remodeling 49 50 Hand tools 67 32 Appliances 49 50

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Source: Home Improvement Research Institute