Oct. 30--Fleeger's Pro Hardware, which has sold tools, nails, and other hard line goods for six decades out of a store on West Bancroft Street in Sylvania Township, will close that site by the end of November.

The family owned store, which opened in 1946 at 7828 West Bancroft, succumbed to competition from big-box home improvement retailers, and a location that had become increasingly irrelevant as area shopping patterns changed, said owner Laura Fleeger, a third-generation family member.

"It's been a long time coming. Profits have continued to decline," Ms. Fleeger said. "We really tried a lot of things in the past few years to help, but to no avail.

"It was like nurturing a sick child," she added.

Fleeger's hardware at 2149 South Byrne Rd., the last of what was a three-store chain, will stay open. The Bancroft store, which is closed temporarily to prepare for a closeout sale, will reopen Monday and stay open until all its merchandise is sold.

Ms. Fleeger said not only was it hard to compete with home-improvement chains, the neighborhood around the Bancroft store changed. It sprang from the post-World War II building boom, "but now the area has a lot of professionals and others who don't do their own home improvements," she said.

Since 1997, when Home Depot opened its first area store after the demise of Builders Square and Handy Andy stores, the Toledo retail hardware market has become ultracompetitive. Home Depot has four area stores, and its chief competitors, Lowe's and Menard's each have three stores.

Small neighborhood hardware retailers have had a rough time competing.

Fleeger's operated a store on West Central Avenue in Toledo from the late 1970s to 1998, but closed the store because of the planned arrival of Home Depot nearby on Secor Road, and the inability to retain a favorable lease at the Kenwood Gardens Shopping Plaza.

Even a major retailer, Sears, failed in an attempt to operate successfully two small neighborhood hardware stores.

According to the National Retail Hardware Association, in 2004 retail hardware industry sales totaled $237 billion, with home center chains gobbling up $144 billion and small stores getting $29 billion. Lumberyards took in $64 billion.

"There's still a need for a good hardware store in my neighborhood, but obviously, it's become more hard to survive," said Tim Janney, owner of Janney's Service Center on Secor Road. It is the smaller successor to the former Janney's Ace Hardware that closed in 2007 after 80 years.

"You have to look at what the big boxes aren't doing -- and then use that as a niche," Mr. Janney said.

Janney's, known for its upside-down sign, sold its site to Rite Aid for $3.3 million, a figure that Mr. Janney said he and his brother, Doug, knew might be a one-time opportunity.

Janney's now lives in a small building north of Alexis Road where it sells lawnmowers, snow throwers, leaf blowers, tree trimmers, and chain saws and gets the bulk of its revenues from repairing those items.

Fleeger's also takes in revenue through subcontract repair work from Home Depot and Lowe's, neither of which do their own warranty repairs.

Ms. Fleeger said several local independent hardware stores have banded together in the last few years to do joint advertising and discuss their plight.

The group includes Fleeger's, Janney's, Colony Hardware, Ondrus True Value Hardware, Lambertville Do It Best Hardware, and Fred's Pro Hardware.

"We're just trying to get our heads together and survive," Ms. Fleeger said. "If you'd told me when I was a kid that later I'd be sitting at a table with Janney's so we could put our heads together, I would not have believed it.

"But here we are now, both trying to figure out how to survive. Tim's become my best buddy," she said.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

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