Good morning,
If Amazon is “the everything store,” Hippo Hardware & Trading Company is “the everything else store.”
Want to replace your doorbell with a Victorian model that works with a crank or stop your sink with a 100-year-old industrial drain basket or light your room with iron sconces pulled from a Pullman sleeping car? Hippo Hardware is the home décor partner for you. The Portland, Oregon-based business comprises 30,000 square feet of lighting, plumbing, hardware, and architectural elements dating from 1860 to 1960. Much of the inventory was salvaged from the city's homes and its most respectable--and disreputable--public buildings.
The sheer range of inventory is part of the allure. The other part is all personality: Since launching Hippo Hardware in 1976, co-founders Steven Miller and Stephen Oppenheim have long been known for their cheeky senses of humor. They’ve pranked their neighbors. They scattered 3,000-plus hippo figurines throughout their store. At one point, the company got into salvage work, stripping potentially valuable trimmings from homes slated for demolition. Miller and Oppenheim recruited the homeless and veterans to do the work, and dressed them in clown suits.
"We wanted people to notice us," Miller tells Inc.. "You remember it if you look out a window and see your neighbor's house being torn apart by 10 people in clown suits."
It worked. Check out our story to learn how this local salvage shop developed an incredibly close-knit relationship with its customers, and how that’s buoyed the company through both good times and bad. |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment