The 2000 entrepreneur
What Frentz Hardware does, and what anyone needs to do, to succeed in business today

We recently received an e-mail from a Royal Oak resident who wanted to know how Frentz Hardware continues not just to survive, but prosper, in the face of large, chain store competition.

Some might say the answer is raw determination, but there’s more to it than that. Mike Frentz, one of the three brothers who runs the family hardware store, isn’t even certain his brothers would agree with all his answers to that question. But he thinks they would agree with the spirit behind the answers.

It’s no secret that larger, chain hardware stores, such as Home Depot, are relatively close by and feature competitive pricing. The Frentz brothers have watched them spring up; watched some of them consolidate with one another; and still, their store remains healthy.

"What it (success) boils down to – is it me, my brothers, the store itself, what we sell? Ninety-five percent of our items are under $100. Many items at the larger stores are well over $100. We’ve got so many things here. And I can’t tell you how many people come in and say ‘I’ve been looking at three or four other places and nobody’s got it,’ but we always have it. This is a hardware store, isn’t it?" Mike said.

It’s sort of a lesson in New World economics. Mike said one of his brother’s high school girlfriends, who moved to Colorado, recently came back for a visit. "She said ‘I can’t imagine how you can still be in business,’ " Mike said. The answer comes in several parts:

·"If John were here right now he’d tell you service is the main reason, and service is number one around here," Mike said. "I’d tell you it’s service plus having the right stock – service isn’t much without the right stuff to sell.

"The key is to order the items customers want, find them and stock them. That’s part of the evolution of our store. If they’re asking for them (items they can’t find elsewhere), then they need them and eventually, over long periods of time, like 5 or 10 years, you gradually have (a store full of) what everybody needs." Mike said the larger chains "don’t want to deal with the nickel and dime stuff, and I’m not saying that because it’s cheap. I’m saying that because it’s really stuff that costs a nickel or a dime, like a washer."

· The knowledge to determine what a customer needs. If a customer asks for a given thing, and Frentz doesn’t have it, the transaction isn’t over. "For example, maybe we don’t have a particular fitting, but we know how things work well enough to suggest an alternative fitting." The management texts call this flexible thinking and finding a solution. Mike wonders if 15 or 20 years from now, there will be anyone left in a hardware store who knows enough to explain the stuff he and his brothers discuss every day with their customers.

·"They don’t have three owners on the floor waiting on customers," Mike said of the larger chains. "That’s what makes everything else possible." Everything else, in this case, refers to knowing many of their customers by name; being able to establish a face-to-face relationship with their customers; and being able to break the rules. "If a guy comes in and needs a faucet but says he forgot his wallet, I’ll tell him to take the faucet and stop back when he has his wallet," Mike says, adding that he’s never been disappointed by extending that courtesy.

· Of the larger stores, Mike believes they’ll survive, and do well, because of their low pricing. But he also believes there’s got to be more to it than that -- a place for people like him, who have 30 plus years of experience in plumbing, electrical, gardening and other specialties that do-it-yourselfers often need a little guidance in. "You can’t find experience like that in the aisles of some of those other stores. It’s just some guy who’s working at minimum wage, who might be nice, but probably doesn’t know any more than you do." He notes, with pride, that the owners of Frentz have a lot of crossover knowledge from department to department, while that isn’t necessarily true of his larger competitors.

"Sometimes I think we’re a dying breed," he says of independent shopkeepers who actually know a little about their business. "But we really like it, and we like doing what we do. That’s got to make a difference, too."