Rick Karp, the owner of all four Cole Hardware stores throughout San Francisco, works tirelessly to make people aware of why shopping locally is not only a nice thing to do for the community, it's also good for business. The group is called the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchant Alliance. Karp formed it with Brownie's Hardware and a couple of independent booksellers. It's no secret that bookshops in San Francisco have been decimated in the past 10 years by the arrival of chain bookstores. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, says "Friends don't let other friends shop at chain stores."

   

This holiday season, Karp hopes San Franciscans realize how lucky they are that The City is not already a strip mall.

   

We spoke with Karp at his store on Polk and Green Streets. He's owned it for four years. His father founded the first store on Cole Street in 1959.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: You are a great believer in the value of local shopping. It's a personal matter, isn't it? Hardware can be very personal, when you think about it.

RICK KARP: It is personal. And many of our staffers are teachers of people. They look at themselves as educators, trying to help people with their needs around the house. The name of our game is to be as helpful as possible. Anything you can think of, and if we can’t find it, we'll get it for you.
 

NORTHSIDE S.F.: The store itself is a bit of a microcosm of the neighborhood, no? 

KARP: Yes, each one of our stores is slightly different, depending on the neighborhood. We try to reflect the demographics. The Polk store is home-oriented, apartment-oriented. We haven't seen any really big changes around here in the Polk Street-Russian Hill neighborhood over the years. It's still a pretty upscale area. We do see more and more dogs, and more and more children. That's a nice thing, more strollers — seeing families here is a good thing.
 

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Did you raise your family around here? 

KARP: Oh, no, when I needed a home, I had to go to San Mateo. San Francisco was too expensive for me.

 

NORTHSIDE S.F.:  You often hear residents complain that they cannot find a hardware store in their neighborhood, but there are about four in this neck of the woods, on Polk Street …

 KARP: Yeah, there's Brownie's at Polk and Sacramento, the True Value shop … if there's a hardware store in the neighborhood, you can pretty well assume that the shopping area is tied to the community versus the chains that come in.

 
NORTHSIDE S.F.: So the big chain operations, like Home Depot and all that, they're the big enemy?

KARP: They typify the big enemy, not just in the hardware business. San Francisco has been really lucky to minimize their impact on The City and the efficacy of our neighborhoods. San Francisco's been good about keeping them out. Home Depot actually has a permit to build in San Francisco now. I've made it a hobby of fighting them over the past 25 years, but on their fourth attempt they got by the Board of Supervisors …

NORTHSIDE S.F.: How do you circumvent the Board of Supervisors?

KARP: It's not very easy. Right now we'll be going before the Board of Permit Appeals in order to slow them down. It's not so much about Home Depot versus Cole Hardware; for me it's the incursion of big box retail into San Francisco. I think it will cause a seismic shift in the way people shop in San Francisco per the neighborhood shopping areas. A big box never stands alone. Once one gets in, their cousins come. It would cause a tilt in the shopping habits here. That will hurt our neighborhoods. San Francisco is really lucky to still have these small shopping districts.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Visitors to San Francisco often comment how this town has not been homogenized … yet.

KARP: There aren't too many cities like this. A couple of years ago we set up a group in San Francisco called the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchant Alliance (SFLOMA). It's specific to being able to help consumers identify on the street what businesses that are owned locally, are independently owned, not part of a chain or a franchise, and (to) better educate people about the value in shopping locally. There are about 150 stores involved. There will be more. We have decals, we've made a study called the San Francisco Retail Diversity Study. It's been well-received. Supporters of Measure I, which was just approved by voters, used it as a foundation for the efficacy in supporting small businesses in San Francisco.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: What are the incentives for the consumer to shop locally?

KARP: If you spend  a dollar in a locally owned business, approximately 45 cents gets recycled into the community with other businesses, professions, trade people, accountants, office supplies, etc. If you shop at a chain, only about 20 cents gets circulated into the local economy. It's a huge difference. In San Francisco, there are so many small businesses and locally owned businesses that together as a force, they're a major job creator in The City. We also found if you shift just 10 percent of your shopping from a chain to a locally owned business, you'll actually create 1,300 new jobs, and another $500 million of economic activity in The City. Our mission at SFLOMA is to sort of get that word out to people. Think twice when you go shopping. If there are some things you can easily buy at an independent versus going to Macy's or Home Depot or Starbucks, shop locally, and San Francisco will be better off.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Will you open another Cole Hardware store?

KARP:  It's possible. People are always asking for it. North Beach does not have a hardware store right now. Hardware stores are thriving. That's a good sign. Business is generally steady all year round. As I said, we are dedicated to education. Cole Hardware (stores) are the first and only hardware stores in the country to be Green Certified. That means we keep a sustainable lifestyle in the store, we educate our customers quite a lot, things that might help the environment. We are kind of lucky that we are a big small business.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Do you make economic forecasts  based on the behavior of your customers?

 KARP: I don't think that we have been hit by the economic downturn that the country is experiencing, but that could change after the first of the year. This is an upscale neighborhood, as I mentioned, but our store in the Mission District has already shown signs of people being reluctant to spend. I suspect that is going to spread around The City.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Is that a local sign of a recession?

KARP: I hope we don't have a recession. I often say the hardware business is recession-resistant because 70 percent of what we sell, you need. Regardless of the situation, you get it. If there's a recession and people are holding onto their money more, they tend not to shop at the big boxes or at the chains, they tend to patronize the local store because they get extra service and value for their dollar. And there's a perception that they spend less. If they have a  $20 bill, they're happy to come to the hardware store. If they have a $100 bill, they'll go to the big chain or the hardware store. When times are tough, people rely on the business they know and trust.

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