"Bruce Barnett" wrote in message
...
"John Grossbohlin" writes:

For me personally, their product mix didn't offer much of interest for a
walk in store--Woodworkers Warehouse was far more interesting. ;~)


Well, I was at both stores, and the Woodcraft store was 100 times
better than WoodWorker's Warehouse. I spend a lot of time and money at
Woodcraft, and every time I pass the empty store I get an empty
feeling in my gut.

I'm down in Ulster county (work in Schenectady) and the Kingston
Woodworker's Warehouse was one of the best stores in the whole chain... they
actually made money in that store and the manager, Phil, was good about
getting things for me and making sure I got the best deal on things. I
regularly ran into the owners of local cabinet shops and contracting outfits
in the store because the store had the tools and supplies to keep those
businesses moving. The hobbyists benefited from the commercial business as
the store was well stocked with items that sold...

The Albany Woodcraft's business, on the other hand, struck me as doing
almost pure hobbyist business. While there is nothing wrong with hobbyists
how many sanders are they going to wear out in a lifetime? One small
commercial shop I know well of goes through a couple sanders per year,
looses and replaces dozens of screw drivers per year on job sites, and the
list of constant purchase items goes on...

Also, from what I'd heard the Albany WW was not of the same caliber as the
Kingston store which could explain our varying experiences with them. I
think that was due to the options available to contractors and cabinet shops
as well as management differences.

The owner's cited being required to stock large quantities of slow moving
merchandise, carving chisels and hardware in particular, and that tied up
their cash. Another problem was that the slick, high profile location was
expensive. They bled cash until they couldn't bleed any more...

In this Albany/Schenectady/Troy area there are a lot of places when
the rental property owners think they have a goldmine. I've seen
entire strip malls remain empty for years because they insist on high
rental prices, and small stores that try to survive keep failing.

I'm familiar with that mind-set... don't understand it but I suppose
corporate owners might have a portfolio of properties and not really know
what a particular location is realistically capable of generating. I recall
looking at an appraisal of a water driven grist mill property that was on
the market for $1 million. I thought they were nuts as this place was on a
dead end road in rural upstate NY and they were using the properties in
Merchant's Square in Colonial Williamsburg, VA as comps! CW was doing about
a million visitors per year, plus the College of William & Mary being across
the street, and other historic sites in the area to draw people to the
stores... If the Grist Mill was capable of pulling in 5,000 people per year
I'd be shocked. BTW, that property didn't sell for the million. The son took
it over and sold it some years later for, as I recall, $350,000. ;~)


I didn't know about those requirements for keeping carving chisels
etc. displayed. But that helps explain the problem. I always wondered
about the huge displays, and all that wasted space.

It's a shame that Woodcraft was so restrictive in their policies.

Woodcraft is kind of like Subway sandwich shops... the company makes money
on everything but the owners of the franchises are often making trivial
wages for themselves. Some year ago there was a Wall St Journal article on
Subway that laid out how most of the franchises did poorly for the owners
but if they owned a bunch of them it was possible to make decent money.
About the same time the local paper interviewed the owner of the local
Subway and he figured he was making about minimum wage after all was said
and done.

John