THE owner of one of Perth’s oldest hardware stores is making a push to service the CBD.
East Victoria Park Hardware owner John Wardle said his company had the ability to service the CBD well.
“We already look after the Burswood and Sheraton hotels,” Mr Wardle said.
“And we definitely have the ability to service a lot more city-based clients.”
Mr Wardle said Bartercard had proved very successful for his turnover.
“We could probably get rid of half of our stock on Bartercard. We’ve had to put restraints on it,” he said.
Besides the Bartercard traffic coming through the store, the company also picks up some trade sales and custom from the offices in Victoria Park.
However, the bulk of the business’ clientele are drawn from the 31,000 people living within a five kilometre radius of the store.
That number of people looks likely to expand considerably.
A number of properties in East Victoria Park and surrounding areas are being subdivided to create two or three homes.
The store’s current market catchment is a far cry from that available when it first opened its doors.
It was originally Hullett’s Hardware, the first hardware store to set up out of the Perth CBD.
“It’s about eighty or ninety years old,” Mr Wardle said.
“The store supplied most of the building materials for the houses built in the area back then.”
The store is now under the True Value brand, one of the several tiers of Mitre 10 branding.
Mr Wardle said his store had been in the Mitre 10 system for the past five years and had only changed to the True Value name in the latter part of 1999.
