New energy, and a new owner, for the Marfa Hardware Company
MARFA — The new owner of the Marfa Hardware Company, Yoseff Ben-Yehuda, quickly rummages through a large cardboard box filled with a seemingly random assortment of freshly-delivered items.
“Nothing random about it,” Ben-Yehuda explains. “This is just what the doctor ordered for the store to be restocked another week.”
He’s looking for a striker tip for a regular customer. “For welding … like to get a spark,” Ben-Yehuda said. “We’re looking for a refill on the flint.”
One of the roll-up doors on the white-painted metal building is wide open, revealing an unusually cloudy day, as numerous supply boxes loaded onto palettes await meticulous placement on the store’s shelves. Customers mill about comfortably, chatting with Ben-Yehuda.
A mild-mannered beagle named Ruger — after the firearm manufacturer, belonging to employee Vicki Barge — is never far away from her and her restocking cart. “He works mornings, usually,” Ben-Yehuda said.
In October, Ben-Yehuda bought the Marfa Hardware Company, previously owned and operated by Bruce Matney for nearly a decade, but he’s already attuned to the store’s many rhythms. He combs through the store on Saturdays to see what’s missing from the shelves, places an order — typically for around 300 different items — as late as Sunday evening, and receives deliveries on Tuesdays. A Christmas tree a customer ordered on Friday was ready for pick up by Tuesday.
“That I ever thought I could compete legitimately with Amazon is insane to me, but I feel like it’s somehow a modest reality that maybe it’ll happen,” Ben-Yehuda said.
He’s hoping to eventually develop a website for online ordering, but he’s already made several changes to the business. Signs have been freshly repainted, heavy equipment is now available for rent and Ben-Yehuda is adding a stock of building materials to the store’s offerings. Marfa Hardware Company now carries basic steel shapes — with more available via special order — and will soon expand to offering plywood, drywall and lumber.
“We’re trying to add building materials back in as an experiment to see if that’ll work here,” Ben-Yehuda said. “But Marfa hasn’t had a two-by-four sold in 15 years.”
Ben-Yehuda, who first moved to Marfa in 2010, has held various roles in town. He’s been a Chinati Foundation intern, Food Shark dishwasher, City Council member, and owns his own construction company — his experience as a hardware store customer informs his ownership.
He intends to finish building projects he’s already begun over the next couple of years, he said, but ultimately make running the hardware store his full time gig. “A big part of the motivation” to take over the hardware store was to have a more family-friendly job, he said — Ben-Yehuda’s wife Adrienne gave birth to their first child, a baby girl named Noa Marie, around six weeks ago.
The new father has had his work cut out for him, familiarizing himself with the hardware store’s extensive inventory — there’s around 10,000 items in stock — and figuring out where everything goes. The sheer amount of items, and the store’s broad appeal to contractors, home owners and casual browsers, leads to some humorous combinations. The dryer vents are next to the door handles; you can buy a saw blade or cut a key with a novelty design.
But everything’s well-organized and clearly visible throughout the many aisles. Ben-Yehuda said restocking can be “addictive,” but “you have to get in the flow.”
While adding building materials is the most appealing new aspect of the business for him, he said, it’s also been fun witnessing the shopping habits of a primarily local clientele — “the homeowner that doesn’t care about bulk screws,” or the would-be Dollar General goer that picks up a welcome mat they didn’t know they needed.
“I really feel like the stores and restaurants that cater to people that live here diminished as the businesses that cater to visitors flourished, and that’s a numbers and cents thing; it makes sense,” Ben-Yehuda said. “I do think this is a totally viable business. And I love that people that live here come in and shop.”
Because the store is small enough, Ben-Yehuda said, he can stock things specifically for one individual if they intend to buy it on a regular basis. “I get excited that we can be that responsive,” he said. “It’s worth it for us to be like, whatever you want the answer’s yes, we’ll make it happen.”
Ben-Yehuda brings a distinctly playful attitude to the place. Looking to “cultivate a heavy equipment theme” to the store, he added a selection of John Deere toys and soon plans to release a video promoting new lunchtime hours, in which he sings his own hardware-theme lyrics to “What is Love” by Haddaway. “What is lunch,” he sings. “Baby don’t shut down, no more.”
He stands naturally behind the check out counter, wearing a bright red Marfa Hardware Company beanie with a mellow jazzy playlist and customer banter enlivening the industrial structure. A customer who does electrical work picks up sheets of sand paper for a sculpture he’s working on. He and Ben-Yehuda discuss the joint lottery ticket they went in on together. Another customer combs over ‘90s Hardware comics Ben-Yehuda bought on eBay which feature a buff cyborg-type hero wielding a metal chain. “A cog in the corporate machine is about to strip some gears…,” a tagline on one of the issues reads.
“For me, being a real hardware dork, there’s not enough hardware … Like, ‘Quick go, get the bolt 9/32s,’” Ben-Yehuda said of the comic’s dialogue.
The new business owner understands and appreciates the building trade, as well as why the hardware store and what it represents — a go-to general store of a largely bygone era — are so special. “I fetishize aspects of it. I have a hard time accessing the homeowner mindset versus the professional mindset,” Ben-Yehuda said. “If I can guess it’s like a place with everything, most of the useful things you need. Before there was Amazon, there was the hardware store, especially in a small town.”
The Marfa Hardware Company is open Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Follow the store on Instagram, @marfahardwarecompany, for updates.