Overview
Crozet Hardware Co. has been at 5783 The Square since the early 1950s, in a building that the Sandridge family has owned since 1934. The store opened in 1949, founded by Norman Gillum in a since-demolished structure between The Blue Goose and what is now Cocina del Sol. Gillum moved the business twice, to its current spot, then briefly to the old Crozet Theater, and finally back to The Square, before selling to Rick Ruscher on December 26, 1984. Gillum stayed on for five years training Ruscher in the business, then retired to Culpeper, where he died in 1994.
That is the founding outline. The store has been running on the same plan since.
By Ruscher's own assessment, Crozet Hardware is the oldest surviving business in Crozet, challenged perhaps only by Modern Barber Shop. The plan, in his own words, is to stay the same.
What the store does
The stockroom holds approximately 10,000 items. The mix is what an old-fashioned hardware store carries: plumbing supplies, fittings, valves, copper and PEX, spray paint, lawn and garden supplies, mulch, seed, fertilizer, stove pipe, rope sold by the foot, wire sold by the foot, and roughly 50,000 pounds of bird seed a year.
The candy rack is stocked with Juicy Fruit, Necco wafers, and Chuckles. There are pink light bulbs because a customer once needed them. There is a section for kerosene lamp parts because there are still kerosene lamps in service in the rural Crozet hills. There are stove pipe fittings because some Crozet houses still heat with wood.
Services run beyond retail. The store cuts 4,000 to 5,000 keys a year, mostly for residential and small-commercial customers. They cut glass to size. They replace tool handles. They repair kerosene heaters and lamps. They run a sharpening service: drop off knives, axes, lawn-mower blades, garden tools on a Tuesday and pick them up the following week. (Electric hair clippers and reel mowers are the only things they don't sharpen.)
The customer base is mostly local, homeowners on a Saturday-morning project list, contractors picking up a missing fitting on the way to a job, retirees with a hobby that requires hardware. Average daily traffic: about 75 customers. Saturdays: about 300. Spring Saturdays are the busiest time of the year, when half the village remembers all at once that the lawn needs work.
How it survives
The store competes with Lowes in Charlottesville and the Harris Teeter shopping plaza's general retail by carrying things big-box stores don't and by having staff who know what customers are talking about when they walk in describing a problem.
Ruscher: *"We have stuff that most people don't carry and we know what people are talking about when they come in needing something. We help them."* Jean Seal, a long-tenured staff member, frames the inventory philosophy more bluntly: they stock *"things people actually need."*
Inventory management is old-fashioned. *"I walk the store and write down what we're short on,"* Ruscher has said. *"We don't do a computer inventory. We just count."* Annual inventory begins December 26 and the store closes on New Year's Eve to finish counting. Reorders go out weekly through about 100 vendors, primarily Orgill, the national wholesaler, and Wetsels' in Harrisonburg. The first computer was installed in the office in roughly 2007, mostly to check supplier websites for stock availability.
The proverbial truth in the store is Ruscher's line: *"We always say it takes three trips to the store to do a plumbing project."*
The character of the place
A 10-year-old African Gray parrot lives in Ruscher's office, which is raised above the floor on a low platform with windows looking out into the aisles. She announces "Crozet Hardware" when the phone rings and says "Hi, guys!" to anyone who walks in. She escaped once and was found on Crozet Avenue, having flown past Parkway Pharmacy. Her flight feathers are now clipped.
Ruscher's office windows are largely obscured by his collection of approximately fifty die-cast truck banks, pickups in various paint schemes, most stamped with hardware-store or supplier logos. The store radio plays 102.3 FM. Lunch-time TV covers news and UVA games.
The staff is unusually long-tenured. Jeff Birckhead has been there nearly as long as Ruscher. Jean Seal and Billy Staples have been there for years. The place runs on muscle memory.
After the Mudhouse Coffee opened a few storefronts away, customers started parking in Crozet Hardware's spaces for hours at a time. Ruscher reluctantly installed reserved parking signs, a decision that earned him a complaint from one customer who called the signs "not Crozet-friendly." Ruscher's response: *"I hate doing it, but I have to protect my customers and the business. We have elderly customers."*
Visiting
Address: 5783 The Square, Crozet, VA 22932. Phone: (434) 823-4381.
Hours: 7 AM–6 PM Monday through Friday. 7 AM–4 PM Saturday. 9 AM–4 PM Sunday. Closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Otherwise, open every day of the year.
The store sits at the heart of The Square, between Mudhouse Coffee and Parkway Pharmacy, with parking in front (reserved signs and all) and additional spots around the corner. The front-door bell still rings when you walk in. The aisles are narrow. The light is fluorescent. The smell is faintly of mulch, paint thinner, and old wood floor.
If you need something specific, ask. The staff will find it or tell you they don't carry it and where to go. They will rarely guess. They will walk you to the aisle. They will explain how the part fits.
Why it matters
Independent hardware stores in towns of 9,000 people are mostly gone. The economics that supported small-town hardware retail in the 1950s, local distribution, regional wholesalers, families who fixed their own plumbing, were eroded over decades by the big-box model and online retail. Most small-town hardware stores closed in the 1990s or 2000s. The handful that survived did so through some combination of being faster, more knowledgeable, more useful, and more woven into the community than the alternatives.
Crozet Hardware did all four. It is faster than driving to Charlottesville. It is more knowledgeable than the seasonal staff at the big stores. It carries the things big stores stop stocking when those things stop turning. And it has been at the same spot, run mostly the same way, by some combination of two owners and a small bench of long-tenured staff, for over 75 years.
The historical context: in the 1950s and 60s, The Square was lined with businesses that no longer exist, Crozet Drug, Red Front Market, the Crozet 5 & 10, Modern Barber, Haden's Cold Storage, the Crozet Theater, a People's National Bank branch, two grocers, the Crozet Superette. Most of those are gone. The hardware store is not. That continuity is most of the reason The Square still feels like The Square.
If you live in Crozet, you have been here. If you don't, walk in. Buy something small. Listen to the parrot. Ask the man behind the counter what he thinks. The plan is to stay the same. So far the plan is working.
In the news
More retail in Crozet
Frequently asked questions
Where is Crozet Hardware Co.?
Crozet Hardware Co. is located at 5783 The Square, Crozet, VA 22932, in Crozet, Virginia.
How do I contact Crozet Hardware Co.?
You can call (434) 823-4381. Hours and current information are most reliable directly from the business.
What kind of business is Crozet Hardware Co.?
Crozet Hardware Co. is categorized as retail in our Crozet directory. See the description and quick facts above for what makes this listing distinctive.
