Michael Broder, Op-Ed –
Walk into any hardware store today and you’ll hear a customer ask a version of this question: “Can I order that online?” Of course you can. And for some things, you probably should.
But some things are nearly impossible to order from a website. The problem isn’t finding a product; it’s knowing which product you need.
What size screw is right? How do I fix this without replacing the entire thing? Why did the last coat of paint peel? And what if I have no idea of what I’m looking for?
That’s where a neighbourhood hardware store still earns its place.
For 92 years, Dudley’s Hardware Paint & Decor (511 Church Street) has been part of Toronto’s Church-Wellesley neighbourhood. The store has changed considerably over that time, as has the neighbourhood around it, but the basic idea hasn’t changed much: sometimes you need help knowing the difference between the thing you think you need and the thing you actually need.
Downtown Toronto presents a particular challenge for independent hardware stores. We serve a neighbourhood dominated by apartments and condos, where people may not have garages, workshops or much room to store tools and supplies.
Most customers aren’t doing massive renovations. They’re fixing a door, hanging a shelf, repainting a room, repairing a piece of furniture, or trying to make a rental feel a little more like home.
Those projects all require hardware, and more often than not, they require advice.
That advice is one of the hardest things to replicate online. In the era of AI, a customer can search for “paint for a bathroom cabinet” and get dozens of results. At Dudley’s, they can bring in pictures, the cabinet door itself, or just describe what they’re trying to do and discuss what will actually work.
For contractors and tradespeople, when a project is under way and something unexpected happens, waiting two days for an online order doesn’t help. Nor does fighting traffic for 30 minutes to the nearest Home Depot. Having someone nearby who can help solve the problem and get the right hardware that afternoon has real value.
That doesn’t mean independent hardware stores can ignore how retail has changed. We have to change too.
This fall, we’re expanding our paint department with the introduction of Valspar, giving customers more options for premium projects, professional applications and everyday painting.
Making our paint department more useful means offering more than cans of paint. It means better colour selection, better product choices and better advice about which products make sense for your project and budget.
It also means continuing to be a neighbourhood business.
That has particular meaning in Church-Wellesley Village, a neighbourhood with a long history as the heart of Toronto’s queer community. Dudley’s has grown alongside that community; having a storefront also means knowing your customers, supporting the people around you, and contributing to making the neighbourhood feel like a community.
A downtown neighbourhood is more than the buildings lining the streets. It’s the businesses people know, the places where they recognize the staff, the shops where someone remembers what they bought last time, the café they stop at every morning for coffee, and the places they go to when their problem doesn’t fit neatly into an online search.
That role may look different than it did 90 or even 20 years ago. It may even be smaller. But smaller doesn’t mean less important.
In a city where shopping happens increasingly through a screen, there is still a lot of value in being able to walk down the street, open a door and say: “I’m trying to fix this. Can you help?”
That’s what a neighbourhood can do.
Michael Broder is the store manager at Dudley’s Hardware Paint & Decor.
