Sometimes at the end of the month, you can hear Larry Krupski’s typewriter banging away in his perch overlooking the single-aisle storefront of Jacobs Hardware.

Like many things in the hardware store, Krupski’s monthly ritual of typing the client’s name on their invoices with a typewriter has been a practice for decades. It works.

Jacobs Hardware works, too, in the now so urban-trendy Queen West strip, where it has served customers since 1924. Krupski, 49, got his start in 1985, when a friend of his family helped him get a summer job manning the counter at the store.

Jacobs has defied the typical gentrification story. Where small businesses often get pushed out by skyrocketing rents, the hardware store’s owners have found that towering condo buildings make for legions of new customers with different tastes.

“We used to sell pipe for gas and for water, and now we’re selling it more for furniture,” said Krupski. “I’ve always classified us as the convenience store of hardware stores. We have a little of everything and we have enough to get you through your job.”

Over nine decades, Jacobs Hardware has had to handle shifting trends in the neighbourhood, storms, riots and the decline of industry near downtown.





“They always say hardware stores are recession proof. I don’t believe it, but they say if the economy’s good, you’re going to buy new stuff. If the economy’s bad, you’re going to start repairing things on your own. We have the best of both worlds,” said Krupski.

More recent challenges have threatened the hardware store. In 2008 and 2009, Krupski battled plans to build a Home Depot location down the road at Portland St. The company eventually pulled out and Loblaws moved in instead.

Krupski became part-owner of the hardware store in 1990, alongside Donald Fetter, who purchased the store from the son of the original owner. Fetter has since retired, leaving Krupski holding the reins for the whole operation.

Toronto’s disasters are reflected in the ebb and flow of Jacobs’ inventory. After police clashed with rioters on the streets during the G20, Jacobs saw a rash of sales for plywood and window-bars. Following the ice storm, customers sought generators.

Day-to-day customers vary. Owners of new bars and restaurants setting up nearby frequently pop in for construction supplies or advice. Office-workers missing a screw or bolt can find it in the stacks. Screws and anchors to hang paintings remain a mainstay of the store’s business.

Ben Gray, a float designer who has had floats in both the Pride Parade and the Scotiabank Toronto Caribbean Carnival, came into Jacobs Hardware on a mission one summer day. He needed staples. Not just any staples — the 8mm ones. Major chain stores had come up empty.

“If I can’t find it in the city, I come here,” says Gray, who bought two packs just so he would have extras. While he’s at it, Gray looks for a rubber mallet that is white so it won’t mark surfaces. An employee disappears down one of the arms of the labyrinthine storage space and emerges with a little mallet that has a translucent rubber bumper on it. That’ll work.

The back room is a treasure trove of parts. Row on row of plywood shelves support thousands of screws, bolts, nuts and washers. Improvised rafters hold up lengths of pipe.

“It’s organized — it really is,” insists Krupski. “There is some order to it, sometimes it’s better than not. Everything has a place. It looks worse than it is, but it’s not. It’s organized.”

As he rattles off the contents of cases lining the shelves, employees interrupt to ask about prices.

The only computer in the store is in Krupski’s second-floor office, used rarely to help with accounting. Information on pricing, bulk discounts and anything else is in Krupski’s encyclopedic brain. A tank for a torch? $8.79. A 24-foot roll of bubble wrap? $9.99.

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The stock at Jacobs has shifted to match the times. One of the newest gadgets is a Kickstarter-fueled keychain replacement. Typical hardware store fare lines the pegboard where customers roam, but the business happens in the back among the boxes of bolts.

“To coin a phrase, it’s always the nuts and bolts of the business. Stuff that’s always guaranteed to sell. Fasteners are big for us. You can’t go wrong with that. Everybody needs screws, everybody needs nuts. Everybody needs bolts. That’s the biggest part of our business,” said Krupski.

The lease on the hardware store is set to expire at the end of the year, but Krupski said they’ve already signed for another five-year term. Still, he remains cautious about the store’s future.

“It’s a great street, a lot of traffic; it’s just that the rents are high. That affects us, but we’re right now surviving,” said Krupski. “Talk to me in five years.”