HHIQ_2Q_17_Complete-low

IN MEMORIAM
WALTER HACHBORN
HOME HARDWARE FOUNDER
REMEMBERED AS HUMBLE VISIONARY
WalterHachbornleavesbehindapubliclegacyasapioneeringbusinessman leaves behind a legacy as a pioneering businessman, butthose
those
who knew him remember him as a genuine friend with seemingly limitless energy.
BY SIGRID FORBERG
W
alter Hachborn grew up in St.
Jacobs, Ont., right behind the
small town’s hardware store. At 17,
the store’s owner, Gordon Hollinger, gave
him his first job in the industry, hiring him
on as a janitor.
By the 1940s, the young Hachborn had
been working at the store for several years.
During the Second World War, he served as
a Staff Sergeant with the Royal Canadian
Ordnance Corps in London, Ont. He
learned a lot about stores and vehicles in his
role as warehouse foreman, and he brought
this knowledge back to the store after the
war had ended.
When Hollinger died in 1948, Hachborn,
who’d be working as his assistant, took
over running the store. Two years later,
Hollinger’s widow also passed away, and
the business went up for sale. Hachborn and
Henry Sittler, along with a silent partner,
Arthur Zilliax, managed to get the money
together to make a bid. The young janitor
who had started with a salary of less than
$500 a year was suddenly the co-owner of a
growing business with annual sales of more
than half a million dollars. And he was only
getting started.
A CONSUMMATE SALESMAN
In 1956, Hachborn read an article in an
American trade magazine, Hardware Age,
which outlined a dealer-owner model for
retail, and he was convinced it could be
imported into Canada. At the time, large
department stores were on the rise in the
Canadian market and Hachborn wanted
to find a way to help protect independent
retailers from going under. In 1964,
Hachborn and Sittler founded what would
become Home Hardware, beginning with
just 122 stores. Today, the co-op boasts
almost 1,100 stores across Canada.
Ray Gabel, Home Hardware’s senior
merchandise advisor, started working for
Hachborn in 1950 at Hollinger Hardware
Wholesale. Gabel remembers visiting stores
with Hachborn in the early days of Home
Hardware, and how Hachborn, in the driver’s
seat, would be so focused on the task
at hand that he would often forget to stop
for lunch. “He was running on something
other than food,” he muses.
Paul Straus, Home Hardware’s president,
started at Home in 1963, and he recalls
those long afternoons in the car, too. “He
just kept going,” says Straus. “It wasn’t until
a few years later that we found out he used
to keep a bag of licorice in his pocket and he
used to nibble on them to keep him going
until suppertime.”
A natural leader, it was Hachborn’s pioneering
vision of uniting Canada’s independent
hardware stores that first sold dealers
on the co-op model. But it was his integrity
that inspired loyalty from vendors, dealers,
and employees alike. “He was very trustworthy,
his word was his bond,” says Gabel.
And while Hachborn worked hard for his
dealers, he expected everyone to put in their
best as well. Straus recalls in the early days
of Home Hardware, there was a dealer who
had a complaint for them at every meeting.
“I remember at the time, Walter just said,
‘Hey, you’re picking the fly specks out of the
pepper. If you would spend as much time
selling as you do complaining, you’d be a
lot better off.’ ”
A CULTURE OF CARING
Home Hardware, now one of Canada’s
most recognizable brands, has built its
reputation around being helpful. Gabel says
it was Hachborn himself who cultivated and
nurtured the company’s unique culture
and dedication to helping. Whether it was
loading trucks on a Sunday night, taking
his coffee break with the warehouse staff, or
offering Straus and his new wife his cottage
for their honeymoon, Hachborn wasn’t
one for airs or pretensions. He was “in the
people business.”
What I learned from Walter was how to
be humble and how to be kind. I think what
he did for this industry, what he did for “his dealers, will stand the test of time.
”
“When you think about the culture, it’s
so embedded into the DNA of our company,”
says Rob Wallace, marketing director
for Home. People talk about Hachborn’s
uncanny ability to remember names, but
Wallace says it went beyond that. He took
the time to ask people about their lives,
their families, and their experiences, and
he remembered their answers. It was more
36 SECOND QUARTER / 2017
Hardlines Home Improvement Quarterly
www.hardlines.ca