On York Boulevard, Baller Hardware has acted as a cornerstone to the Highland Park community since its opening three years ago. The family-owned hardware store continues to provide equipment and supplies to homeowners, business owners and contractors alike.
Online, Baller’s official website displays information any customer needs to get familiar with the two locations. It features a catalog with products offered at both locations, services like picture framing, key duplication and paint matching, as well as how-to articles from “Tips for Storing Lawn and Garden Tools” to “Tips for Baking a Pie”.
According to owner Craig Cowie, Baller Hardware is a family business and he is apart of the fourth generation.
“We have the original store that my grandparents opened in 1959 over [in] Silver Lake and I’ve worked there ever since I was a kid,” Cowie said.
Moving into Highland Park proved to be a logistical challenge and at one point a fantasy, according to Alejandra Ramos. Previously, the hardware store was a branch for Do It Best; the previous owner almost sold the lot to developers.
“It was a dream for [Cowie] to open a second location,” Ramos said.
Cowie said that he only was able to close a deal for the store when his sales representative put him into contact with the owner at the time.
“[As] my dad was retiring, I had actively been trying to open a second location for probably 25 years, but nothing ever was penciled out.” Cowie said. “I met with [the former property manager] and we talked about terms of a lease, and it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
According to Nicholas Gregory, the branch on York Boulevard suited the needs of the community and was larger than the original Baller Hardware in Silver Lake.
“A lot of the items we sell [at Silver Lake] are for newer homes, like drywall instead of stucco or masonry,” Gregory said.
Even at its inception, Cowie said that the store owed its easy transition into Highland Park to the residents who were already Baller customers.
“Having a quality, family owned hardware store, it’s a much different experience than shopping in a big box,” Cowie said. “And people really value that.”
Cowie said that their provision of services to Occidental College, encompassing maintenance faculty, fluctuates frequently, especially during move-in season, along with a 10% discount offered to students, which significantly drives their business.
“Our biggest relations with Oxy are move-in and move-out days, because everyone moves in with hooks and paintings to make it their own and hang up their posters, and all that,” Gregory said. “The reason for the discount is that college students have it hard enough. Especially with the plants section a lot of students want to add a little life to their dorms.”
According to Gregory, the employees of Baller, alongside other local hardware stores in the area, have a certain local familiarity with the historic architecture and maintenance in the Highland Park area. This local expertise, Gregory said, gave stores like Baller an edge over larger name brands.
“The thing with this neighborhood is that a lot of the houses are about 130 years old,” Gregory said. “A lot of places don’t give advice for houses that are 130 years old. Lowe’s and Ace wouldn’t be able to offer those either, but your local mom-and-pop stores already are able to accurately answer those questions.”
Gregory also said that Baller had an obligation to the community to resist inflating prices.
“I do feel that we cater to the old neighborhood that was here […] just by keeping our prices low, especially for the homeowners and contractors,” Gregory said. “We’ve adjust some of the stock, too, to make sense [for the local neighborhood]. But it’s not like one of the super fancy stores where everything is marked up six times over, just because we can.”
According to Cowie, keeping prices low at Baller is a deliberate effort to distance themselves away from the shopping experience at name brand warehouses that have gone national.
“What people don’t realize is that they have this impression that they can go to a big box and everything is cheap but it doesn’t work like that. [Those stores] know where they jack the prices up and essentially gouge the customer. Our pricing is right on par, or better than the big boxes, it’s just about trying to keep things fairly priced.”
As a result, the hardware stores of Eagle Rock and Highland Park are often bundled together in providing a service to the local community, Gregory said. Being honest with advice was as important as attracting and retaining customers, according to him.
“There’s a really good camaraderie between [local hardware stores],” Gregory said. “All the hardware stores here are the same ones who have been in the area. We don’t talk like we’re making business plans, but we know whether other stores carry this stuff, and we know that if we’re lacking that item, we can send someone to the store down the road.”
Apart from Baller being an important presence for Highland Park residents, Gregory said that he noticed the uptick in people buying Baller’s shirts and hoodies. He said he was confused by the trend, but excited by the interest in unintentionally making the brand known worldwide.
“We’ve had people, like middle school kids, from Long Beach come up like two years ago to buy sweaters,” Gregory said. “People have seen them in Dublin, London, New York and Hawaii. I don’t completely understand it myself, but it’s a thing and hopefully it continues.”
Contact Joaquin Martinez at jmartinez7@oxy.edu.
I’d like to give Baller Hardware a huge round of applause, and a huge amount of business from Occidental community members, for their CA native plants section in the Garden Center. Their selection is terrific, their prices are competitive, and their service–well, this service seems to be their stock in trade. Buy native plants at Baller!