Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2010

A hardware legacy lives

Briggs store survives, adapts and aims for 150 years

Thomas H. Briggs' modest general store withstood the turmoil of the Great Depression, adapted to an evolving hardware industry and survived a street transformation that for 18 years made the store less accessible to customers.

Today, Briggs Hardware is weathering the national economic storm that has socked small businesses and local merchants.

With contractors and builders struggling to find work, the 145-year-old Raleigh landmark relies heavily on its reputation and a throwback general store to stay profitable.

"We provide good service to our customers, and at the same time we offer some other specialties that the big-box stores don't," said Marc Scruggs, a former Raleigh City Council member and the sixth generation of Briggs family members to run the store.

Marc and his sister, Evelyn Murray, handle most of the day-to-day operations with their father, Marcus Scruggs.

Most of the Briggs operation is still oriented toward hardware equipment. But a fourth of the store was transformed last year into a general store of old - equipped with cast iron cookware, country hams, homemade preserves, Angus Barn cheese and Texas barbecue sauce.

Murray also keeps retro candy near the cash register, for a nice touch.

"It's funny because part of the store is evolving into what it started out as," said Marcus Scruggs, who started working at the store in the 1950s and vows to quit after the store celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2015.

Personalized service

The "good service" Marc Scruggs speaks of is what keeps loyal customers coming from across the Triangle.

Steve Belvin, a carpenter who lives near Durham, says larger chain stores can't compete with Briggs' service. And Briggs carries many of the higher-quality hardware accessories that many stores don't, he said.

"They're willing to go out of their way to accommodate you," Belvin said. "From a craftsman's point of view, they're the cat's meow. I'll drive 10 miles out of my way just because I know I can find what I need."

Skipper Day, a Raleigh resident who works in commercial real estate, is one of many customers who grew up around the Briggs family. He has shopped at the store for more than 30 years.

"It's just a kind of family atmosphere in there," he said. "It's a personal service you get."

Raleigh's 'focal point'

According to family lore, Thomas H. Briggs in the 1860s exchanged his Confederate money for gold and buried it in the Devereaux Meadow to hide it from Sherman's Union Army. After the war, the story goes, Briggs dug it up, and used it to open the store downtown in 1865.

In 1874, the store moved to the famous Briggs Hardware building on Fayetteville Street, where it remained until 1995. It's the oldest commercial building in downtown Raleigh, built about six months before the Fayetteville Street Post Office, said Ladye Jane Vickers, curator of the Raleigh City Museum.

It was the state's store, where customers would travel for hours to shop. And it was long the focal point of Raleigh, Marcus Scruggs said.

He remembers statewide politicians stopping in to tell stories and weigh themselves before heading to the General Assembly. The free scales were an excuse for politicians to stop by and seek advice from James E. Briggs, Marc's grandfather and a former Raleigh mayor.

"If I had a nickel for every politician that's been in here, we'd be wealthy," Marcus Scruggs said, laughing.

A setback, then progress

When Fayetteville Street was converted to a mall in 1977, it hurt business, and eventually forced Briggs to move to its current location at Six Forks Road and Atlantic Avenue, near the Beltline.

"That says a lot about the business that they were still able to survive as a hardware store when people weren't able to drive up to it," Vickers said. "It's definitely one of Raleigh's oldest businesses that's still active. It's been a staple."

History now hangs from the Briggs walls. In the back are pictures of Thomas Briggs and others who ran the store in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Murray points to an 1888 hardware display that won a gold medal at the N.C. Agricultural Fair.

And they still have those scales frequented by state lawmakers.

"It's cool to be a part of something like this," she said. "We hope to keep it in the family."