News

By Ron Hayes
    How many families does it take to sell a light bulb?
    In Boynton Beach, just one.
    But they have to sell it for 40 years.
    This year, Dale and Edris Hatch, their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren will celebrate four decades as the owners of the city’s oldest, and no doubt friendliest, hardware store.
    In a world where giant corporations try to pass themselves off as folksy family businesses, the Hatch gang are the real thing.
    On May 1, 1972, Dale and Edris Hatch, transplants from Ogdensburg, N.Y., opened a Western Auto store in the old Winn-Dixie shopping plaza on Federal Highway.
    Two years later, they moved down the block to 510 E. Boynton Beach Blvd.
    In 1978, they dropped Western Auto and became Boynton Ace Hardware.
    And they’ve been here ever since. 
    That’s four decades of light bulbs and housewares, door knobs and toilet plungers, bicycles and Christmas trees, not to mention countless hours of neighborly conversation.
    “We bought out the old Austin Supply store, which began in 1908,” says Dale Hatch, “so actually, the business has only been owned by two families in all that time.”
    He laughs at the memory of that first, 2,000-square-foot store. “When we started, it was just myself and a little retired lady in her 80s. We had cross-cut saws, ice tongs and horse collars, and we used to have stuff piled up halfway to the ceiling.”
    Now they have 6,000 square feet and 21 full and part-time employees.
    “We like to hire old people for their knowledge and young people for their muscles,” says Valerie Hatch Pleasanton, the couple’s daughter.
    When her parents bought the business, Valerie was a teenager. Now she’s the president and CEO of the company, and the mother of Megan Pleasanton, who also works in the store.
Her sister and brother, Darlene and Larry, make up the Val-Da-Lar of the corporate name. And her husband, Loran, whom she first met in first grade at Forest Park Elementary School, is a partner of the business, too.
    In those early days, before Home Depot and Wal-Mart, the Hatches ran a small department store. They sold furniture, appliances and toys along with the light bulbs.
    “Now we’re more service oriented,” Valerie says. “We have a specialty lighting department for hard-to-find bulbs, and we make screens and do knife and scissors sharpening.”
    They don’t sell guns anymore.
    “Things change,” Dale Hatch says, “and I figured somebody might buy one and shoot me.”
    And even the sexual revolution has caught up with the hardware business.
    “I remember one man wanted a stem for a faucet,” Megan Pleasanton recalls. “I got it, and he said he wanted to speak to a man to make sure it was the right one. Now we’re in the do-it-yourself era, so we have a lot of women taking charge of their own home improvement projects.”
    In the old days, Ace was the place for Christmas toys.
    “We had a Christmas layaway plan,” Dale recalls. “On Christmas Eve, we always wound up with 100 to 125 bikes here, waiting for people to pick them up. And then on Christmas day, we’d see all the kids out riding our bikes around town.”
    But while Wal-Mart and Kmart rode off with some of their bike business, the little family-owned hardware store is still riding high.
    “People who are building a house go to Home Depot,” says Loran Pleasanton. “People who are fixing something come to us.”
    Home Depot can sell you an entire kitchen, but Boynton Ace has shuffleboard equipment.
    “We created our own niche,” Valerie boasts.
    After all, how many hardware stores grow their own Christmas trees?
    Every year, families up and down the coast get their trees from the Hatches. The Gulf Stream Bath & Tennis Club, the Little Club, the Ocean Club.
    And where do the Hatches get the trees?
    From a little farm Loran and Valerie own outside Asheville, N.C.
    “This year, we’ll sell about 600 Fraser firs,” Loran says.
    And this year, once again, they’ll get people asking for a double-male plug.
    “Every year, people put up their Christmas tree lights backwards, so they wind up with two female plugs. We have to tell them to turn the string around,”Valerie says with a laugh.
    But it’s a patient laugh. Not long ago, she spent about 20 minutes on the phone, helping a customer figure out how to install an air conditioner filter.
    Her family has been providing that kind of service for 40 years.
    Dale is 82 now, and Edris is 85.
    “I’m cutting back,” he says. “I want to spend some more time fishing, and I have a friend who wants to teach me how to play golf.”
    Don’t worry, though. Ace will remain the place.
    Dale’s great-granddaughter, Allianna, who is 8, draws little bookmarks, sets up a table in front of the store, and sells them for a dime apiece.
    “I came in one Sunday,” Edris says, “and she had an Ace apron on down to here and a spray bottle, cleaning the windows.”