John Trousdale & the Golden Hammer

Trousdale's Home Hardware was pretty busy last Friday morning (June 12). There was product to move around, customers looking for building supplies and garden supplies and plumbing hardware, and red shirted staff members were moving quickly in and out of the narrow aisles and the front and back doors. Will Trousdale was on the phone talking about a shipment, and upstairs his brother Matt was in the office, on the phone.

“Where's John,” I asked at the front.

I was told to look around.

I found him in one of the aisles, wearing a brand new, clean red shirt, knowing a photo was coming. He was with another man, and they were fishing through little plastic bags on hooks, looking for the right piece.

A few minutes later, John handed the man what he needed and off he went.

“You made a sale in the end,” I said to John.

“No, gave it away,” he said. “So what do you want to know,” he said, starting an interview that was interrupted more than once by customers asking him to help them find something, in the crowded store.

John was surprised when he heard he was receiving the Estwing Golden Hammer, an international award marking 50 years of service to the hardware industry.

“I only opened this store in 1989, so it's less than 40 years” he said, referring to Trousdale's Home Hardware, which came along two years after he had opened what is now Sydenham Foodland on the George Street property that backs onto Sydenham Lake.

The stores, along with the new Inverary Home Hardware store, are now owned and run by his sons Will and Matt, but John's history in the hardware business goes much further back than 1989.

Not only did he grow up working in his father Nobel's store when he was in school, and even in the summers when he went to Queen's, he joined the business on a full time basis when he graduated from Queen's in 1975, 51 years ago, and counting.

John even worked in two hardware stores for a while, competing businesses.

“I knew that we had to expand to remain competitive and there was nowhere we could go from the old location, and there was no parking. That's why I bought this property, which had a dance hall on it at the time that had closed down. I started with the grocery store, but even though my father was against it, I opened the Home Hardware store and started competing with him, which he was not happy about. And I had to keep working there because he was too old by then to run it himself,” he said.

Eventually, the original store stopped selling hardware and is still operating as Trousdale's General Store.

“When I opened the store, I went with Home Hardware, because it was becoming impossible to operate as an independent, and Home Hardware is built on a co-op model, not a franchise model. We haven't looked back. It's been a great company to be involved with. And now the boys have the new Inverary store as well as this one. They'll deal with the expansion to Moon's Corners. I don't worry about that part of the business anymore, but I love to come in to work, to do whatever anyone needs me to do.”

He does not miss dealing with finances and human resources and purchasing, but he still likes to come in at 8 every morning, but only between Monday and Friday now.

“I like that I'm not tied down, and I don't have all the worries anymore, the boys deal with all that. But I like coming in to work.”

He has kept up all his licenses, so when there is no one available to deliver a fridge to Joyceville, like happened on Friday, off he goes.

But before he left for Joyceville, we needed to get a picture of the golden hammer. No sense wasting that clean shirt.

After the picture, he released the hammer from the plaque it hangs on, and looked around.

“Anyone want to buy a hammer? Give me twenty-five dollars,” he said, not for the first or last time.

Trousdale’s Home Hardware is holding an open house next Thursday (June 25) to mark the Golden Hammer award, and John's 50+ years serving customers in Sydenham and across the region.