Retail Roundup: Ward’s Appliance in Vinton closes
In Sunday’s Retail Roundup column I wrote about Ward’s Appliances in Vinton closing.
The store owner, Linda Waybright, said it was increasingly challenging to compete with big box appliance stores. The store has been in business for more than 30 years.
One thing her store was able to provide was personalized service. She said her staff even made home visits to customers homes who were having an issue with their appliances.
What helps you make your decision in supporting mom and pop shops?
Would you purchase a major appliance from a smaller store to support local economy? Even if a “big box” store offered a lower price?
October 8, 2012 - 8:00 AM
Interesting this article comes up four months AFTER the store closed !
“remembers selling pink and turquoise refrigerators and washer-dryer sets in the 1960s and ’70s.Waybright started at the appliance store 32 years ago”
Not to nitpick, but 32 years ago was 1980 !
Over the years I purchased numerous appliances from Ward’s. It’s NOT all about price. They were always competitive, but their value added service of listening to what a customer needed, and filling that need without a lot of unneeded features and cost, was what kept me going back time after time.
Limited hours are what keeps me from going to small stores usually.
Why make a special trip when its convenient for the owners to be open instead of making a trip when its convenient for me to shop? i can more easily go to Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s etc all at 7 pm than i can try to squeak in a trip to one of these other places on my lunch.
rich…you are epitome of a brain-washed consumer zombie.Don’t ever go to a mom and pop you might die from the quality of service you will get..as opposed to the constant lack of knowledge and lack of customer service the box chains give out.
I understand that small businesses cannot afford to stay opened extended hours when they’ve discovered that most of the generic public will STILL flock to the big boxes for a variety of unsubstantiated reasons. ‘The big boxes stay open longer, they have more selection, their prices are better, they can order stuff quicker, etc.’
What happens is that when you price out the full complement of appliances, factor in the warranty service, factor in the local ownership, factor in the continuity of sales force, etc. it becomes quite reasonable to buy from the locally owned small business.
I care about locally owned small businesses. I will buy from them even if they’re 10% higher than the big boxes, because I understand the purchase of appliances is about more than the initial cost. Just like the headlines on a newspaper article, it’s always about more than the lowest common denominator – the advertised price.
Something I failed to mention – ALL of these small businesses are open on Saturdays. The excuse that ‘They’re not open when I have free time’ falls apart when that VERY obvious fact is considered.
I would change your headline. There is a very fine store called Vinton Appliance. They would be very surprised to hear they are closed.
I’d also be interested in seeing just how few people actually go out on a Tuesday evening at 7 pm to make their decisions on appliances, when they ‘just cannot’ make it on a Saturday morning at 10 am.
I’ve been in Lowes, Home Depot, & Best Buy at those evening times, and the places are virtually empty. Couples go out on the weekend to make those purchasing decisions, they don’t go out after supper during weeknights.
Let’s be realistic – people go to the big boxes because of all the commercials and printed advertisements, and they assume the big guys just ‘have’ to have better pricing and availability and everything else. They ignore the smaller local guys.
The same is true for appliance stores, department stores, pharmacies, restaurant chains, basically every retail category you can name. The public always assumes bigger is better, but their reasoning falls apart when analyzed objectively.
Dougfish,
Thanks for pointing that out. I have changed the post’s headline.
Brian
Steve, your comment – ‘Interesting this article comes up four months AFTER the store closed !’ – is telling. It just goes to demonstrate how much even the media covering retail business defaults to the lowest common denominator, the EASY WAY OUT, how prevalent that action occurs.
Any moron can sit on their couch and watch a TV commercial or read the flyer that comes out mid-week from the big box national franchise. Somehow that same moron has trouble reading the Sunday ad in the local newspaper, or paying attention to the local radio commercial during drive time – both sponsored by the locally owned small business.
As I proved above, the laziness of the typical consumer actually costs themselves money over the short & long term, as well as eliminates the financial hopes of their neighbors who own small businesses.
So, yeah, let’s all blame the local small business for not running a full staff & second shift of employees to 10 pm every evening for that one couple every two weeks who might visit, because that couple already knows they’re going to Lowes at 10 am on Saturday morning, after driving right past the local small business they demand stay open late every weeknight.
We bought all of our kitchen appliances from Wards. They were cost competitive with the big box stores. Much better service and easy to work with.
P.JENKINS don’t make assumptions on that which you do not know.
I’m fairly knowledgeable of most every need I have in a hardware store or appliance store. I’m far from a uneducated, brainwashed consumer. But whatever insults you can spew out on a retail forum…if it gives you the jollies, then feel free.
It’s more about convenience for me than anything else. We have a Lowe’s not terribly far from the house…the closest ‘mom & pop’ appliance retailer is about a half hour further away, and I have to drive past another Lowe’s and a Home Depot in the process, plus a Schewel’s, a Best Buy, and a couple rent-to-own places. To me, that’s almost like driving across town to save 2 cents on gas. If we had an option more local to me, I’d consider them…I like local businesses. But like rich, one of the problems I have is their hours. I frequently work past 6 or 7 during the week, and they are almost all closed by then. Saturdays? I frequently work those too. So for me, quite often, late evening hours are when I do my shopping, even for major projects like new appliances. But I understand the added cost for staying open and having that potentially not yield additional revenues. I worked at Lowe’s for a spell when they tried staying open until 10pm. It was a disaster. No added customers in that extra hour, and it kept employees in the store re-stocking the shelves until midnight, or later, some nights….some of whom had to return the following morning at 6am to open the store. While all the appliances we own have either come with the house, or been bought at the nearby Lowe’s…we do have local appliance repair folks (often part of a local retailer) come in when something needs to be fixed that I can’t do. Their service has been exemplary, and their pricing incredibly competitive on both parts, and labor. And their warranties on the work are equally impressive.
The excuse for most of these local businesses closing is ‘the economy’. Well it is the same economy the rest of us are stuck in and the same economy that does not give me the disposable income to willingly pay 10 percent more for something. Bravo for you if you hvae the extra $100 to spend on that refrigerator. Thanks for supporting the ‘local economy’. But let’s get one thing straight. Those supposed ‘evil’ big box stores support the local economy too! Those 200-300 people employed by that big box store do not get flown in each morning from some far off land. No, they are your neighbors too. How many people does your mom and pop store employee? Three? Five? How about taxes? I would wager that big boxes bring in a much larger percentage of the revenue for local municipalities. So go ahead, support your local business and hold your head high(and get that nose a little higher in the air)! I will join the rest of the ‘mindless zombies’ and got to Wal Mart.
Just one more thought regarding Ward’s.
Some years back I discovered a dead refrigerator on the way to work. I called Ward’s & asked what they had & what it would cost. The refrigerator was delivered & set up without me ever having to walk into their store. Try that with a big box…
Steve, you can call Lowe’s and buy over the phone. It’s rare, but can be done…I took a couple phone-based orders for people when I worked there. More common are online purchases. People can shop for their appliance of choice, buy it, the accessory parts needed for the install, extended warranties, and set up the delivery and haul-away of their old appliance…all without putting on a pair of pants first. Perhaps it’s not as personal as the service and relationships you can get with a local business, but that kind of purchase experience of not going into the store can be had.
After reading a few of the commments I have to agree with John on hours. My work hours are generally the same as theirs with sundays off, which is when most mom and pops are closed. Many places close at 5 pm generally, and while they may have hours on Saturday, we dont. As for the lunch hour thing, you wont have issue in a mom and pop when you get there, but their locations generally tend to be harder to get in and out fast because of traffic flow and parking options.
But, the advertisements are the biggest draw. Weekly flyers in the paper, constant radio advertisements, constant barage of name placement (i.e. our brown paper bags for our yard waste) is the thing that will hinder a mom and pop shop more. they just dont have the millions for advertising.
The Appliance Outlet on Hershberger is where we got our appliances (we just redid the kitchen.) No only do they price match, why we choose them is because they had different items, reputable brands, as well as the featurs we wanted and the sizes of what we were looking for. All the box stores had the same exact thing that was just not quite right and I did not want to settler for so so. Appliance Outlet has a better and more specialized selection as well as the normal. Their service and support was fantastic and they are open at times I can get there. Overall, cost was about about $50.00 difference, but I got what I wanted instead of settling.
Years ago, my mother woke up one Thanksgiving morning to discover that her stove had died. She was only expecting about 25 people for dinner. She called the man who worked at the locally owned store where she had bought her dishwasher. He had given her his business card which included his home number. The salesman was very nice and went to his store, loaded a stove onto a truck and had it installed in my mom’s kitchen by 9:00am. She’ll never buy an appliance anywhere else. I doubt you would get that service from Lowes or HD.
If you are so inclined, there is a scratch and dent store in SE at the corner of 9th and Tazewell. I bought a brand new fridge for my basement there and got a great deal. Some of the flaws are hard to spot.