By Barbara Spector
The Business: Founder Albert K. Hepler moved to Youngwood, Pa., from New Alexandria, Pa., in 1942, after his New Alexandria property and flourmill were acquired by the federal government for the Loyalhanna Dam and its floodplain area. Hepler purchased a small feed and hardware store in Youngwood. Later, the family bought the 19th-century Stanton family mill in New Stanton, Pa., and relocated there.
The family ventured in and out of a variety of enterprises over the years as the community evolved from an agrarian society to a suburban area. The Heplers have operated a restaurant, poultry business and dairy. They have produced cement blocks; sold power equipment, wood stoves and fencing; and serviced small engines.
Although the mill no longer exists, the Hepler family retained the milling business holdings and recipes. Today, they outsource the grain processing to another mill. Stanton Milling, owned by the family, sells buckwheat pancake mix, buckwheat flour and corn meal. The products are packaged in Rhode Island and sold online and in small stores in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
“We’ve had to keep competitive and also diversify our sources of income,” says fourth-generation owner Megan (Hepler) Orient, 40. “We’ve had a number of small business ventures, but the hardware piece has been the constant throughout time. It’s my feeing that the hardware business is able to continue to survive because we fulfill a need.”
Orient’s brother and co-owner, Robert S. Hepler, 43, has a bag that once held Hepler’s Dog Feed framed and hanging on his garage wall. The family business delivered Hepler’s Cattle Feed, Hepler’s Chicken Feed and Hepler’s Dog Feed to customers in the 1940s and 1950s. “That was value-added in an agrarian community,” Hepler says. “But as Western Pennsylvania evolved, hardware rose to the fore. If you look at our square footage in our store, the amount dedicated to hardware and housewares and hunting supplies grew.” Over the years, the store has made changes to stay relevant. For example, it began installing fences and wood-burning stoves (tasks homeowners once routinely did themselves) and introduced online ordering.
Orient and Hepler are planning more changes for the future. Their plan calls for demolition of a building on the hardware store site that they rent to an antique store, the New Stanton Antique Co-op. The store will return to the rebuilt site along with a coffee shop and other vendors.
Hepler notes that his grandfather, Robert H. Hepler, incorporated the business as a C corporation 50 years ago. This formal ownership structure “has allowed family members in multiple generations to move in and out of the business and be bought out cleanly if needed,” the fourth-generation owner says.
“I’ve got the corporate minutes going back 50 years,” Hepler says. “You can trace the share valuation, the price, et cetera.”
The Family: Orient and Hepler, who have served on the corporate board for several years, are now the majority owners of the parent corporation, Hepler’s Town & Country Enterprises Inc. The transition, which took place during the previous fiscal year, was announced to the public as part of the hardware store’s 75th anniversary celebration. Their father, Robert G. Hepler, 71, continues to manage the hardware store and the general business operations on a day-to-day basis.
Neither of the fourth-generation majority owners works full-time for the business or lives in the same town as the hardware store. Orient, who lives in State College, Pa., formerly served as a tourism manager for Stafford County, Va., and as a membership manager for the chamber of commerce in Jacksonville, N.C. Most recently, she was manager of shows and exhibitions at the American Philatelic Society. She’s now involved in developing Hepler’s plan for the future.
Orient drew on her event-planning experience to make the 75th anniversary celebration a reality. She’s also planned the store’s marketing and advertising and helped the company shift from leatherbound ledgers to accounting software. She went back to school to pursue a certificate in historic preservation and, as part of her studies, researched the family’s milling history. “I tried to digitize, as a part of that process, many of the photos we had from our business archives,” she says. “Many of the family members are delighted to look at those photos and reflect on the past.” As the 75th anniversary year continues, she plans to share more photos on social media and on the company website.
Orient is the first woman to be part of the ownership of the family business. The firstborn son of each generation traditionally led the enterprise, although many family members have been involved in the hardware store and other family business ventures over the years.
Her brother earned an MBA after active service in the Marine Corps; he still serves in the Marine Corps Reserves. The family business has been continuously veteran-owned. Founder Albert K. Hepler served in the Army, and his son Robert H. Hepler served in the Army Air Corps. Third-generation member Robert G. Hepler is an Army veteran.
Fourth-generation owner Robert S. Hepler is a senior vice president at Bank of America in Charlotte, N.C., where he’s worked for 11 years. He worked for a large retailer and was a business consultant for two years before joining the bank, where he leads a global team. “I’ve been around the [family] business maybe a little longer than Meg, but lightly so,” Hepler says.
Hepler says he comes into the business once a month. He talks on the phone regularly with his father, a non-family manager, the company’s internal bookkeeper and outside advisers such as the company’s legal counsel or accounting firm. He says he and his sister have freed their father from some responsibilities, such as dealing with the store’s principal supplier.
“We brought enough experience to help with the transition, and that’s been a focus for about four years,” Hepler says. “We’ve done it in a stable manner and a thoughtful manner, and lifted some of those other dimensions of work from his shoulders as a working board.”
In the future, Hepler says, “we’ll start to inject ourselves in some more of the day-to-day operations. We’ve already influenced what the business is doing, and the financial structure, and I’ve played a role in how we’re financed and what we’re doing with the construction. Our goal is keeping the business a going concern. And there may be a different role that Megan plays or that I play than our father has played in the past.”
Although a full-time employee is needed to run the hardware store, some duties, such as bidding on federal and state contracts, selling installation services and serving as a landlord, can be done remotely. “I think that’s the way ahead for our roles,” Hepler says. “Our role may be a little bit different than our great-grandfather, who walked down Fourth Street and opened the door and turned on the lights in the morning.”
Hepler notes that he and his sister currently don’t depend on the family business for their livelihood. “But we do take an equity stake in the business, which is also helpful in the transition, and is a different way to transition the business than, say, buying someone out,” he says. “You ‘sweat equity’ your way into equity, and gently help keep moving the business in the right direction, without saying, ‘Look, I’m stepping in and kicking out a key employee to become the manager.’ “
The Celebration: Hepler’s Hardware hosted an open house on Saturday, April 22, and held a 75th-anniversary sale in April. Specially priced items included a single cut key for $0.75, a Channellock Professional Tape Measure for $7.50 and a Char-Broil Thermos QuickSet 2-Burner Gas Grill for $75.75.
The open house featured vendors who offered locally made and Pennsylvania-made products, including a local orchard, a maple syrup producer and a honey producer. C. Palmer Mfg. Co., whose locally forged products include pizzelle irons, waffle irons and sandwich toasters, also ÂÂparticipated.
The store’s major partners—Stihl, a manufacturer of chainsaws and power equipment, and Superior Systems, which makes fencing—had display trailers on site.
Food available at the celebration included barbecued ribs and Stanton Milling’s buckwheat pancakes. Free samples of the hotcakes were distributed at the event, and a free barbecue meal was given to the first 200 registered attendees. Other giveaways included maple syrup, hats and T-shirts. Visitors participated in a drawing for a Weber grill. There were also activities for kids—face painting and a seed-planting activity.
“The vision for where we’re going with the site and the business was also part of how we celebrated,” Hepler says. He describes the open house as having a “community-market feel.” He notes, “It’s a different feel than going to a hardware store for a sale price. And that’s where we’re going with the site.”
A symbolic groundbreaking for the new building was held during the open house; a 75th anniversary cake was cut and distributed after the ceremony. Jack Herbert, owner of the New Stanton Antique Co-op, will temporarily move his business to a building he owns until the new site is completed. Herbert, who was trying to reduce inventory prior to the move, was offering items at sale prices during the open house. “He had a banner day, and we celebrated him,” says Hepler, who notes that Herbert has been a tenant for 27 years.
Hillside Orchards will have a 12×28-foot market next to the rebuilt antiques store and coffee shop. “Megan’s got a vision for having some of [the other] vendors back with us, whether it’s a First Friday or a farmer’s market on Saturday,” Hepler says.
The Planning: Hepler and Orient say their father laid the groundwork for the celebration. “He’s intimately familiar with all the vendors and the folks that we have partnered with in the community for all these years,” Orient says. “And then I took a little bit of the lead on bringing it together.”
The family drew on institutional memory to plan some aspects of the celebration. For the 50th anniversary, the store had a sale featuring items priced at $5 and $50.
“One of the key pieces was the big anniversary sale piece, and that was months of advance planning,” Orient says. “My father was looking at product to purchase for that sale last fall.” They decided to hold the sale in the spring, when business starts to pick up, she says.
“We’ve always done a spring sales flier to feature the products that will be coming in for that season,” Orient says. Five years ago, when the store had its 70th anniversary, the spring flier incorporated some family history. “So it was a natural fit to again use that annual sales piece and convert it into something that would showcase the anniversary,” she says.
In advance of the milestone, the store worked to digitize its customer list, making it easier to reach key people personally to thank them and invite them to the open house. More than 20,000 sale fliers were sent, and more than 500 customers were directly invited, Orient says. A press release was sent to the local media and posted on the company website.
Hepler says the company celebrated past milestones with an anniversary cake inside the store, special pricing and giveaway items. This year, the family added a new twist by bringing vendors to the site. “That was something Dad wanted to do,” Hepler says. Those who were invited to sell their wares at the event included “business partners who aren’t necessarily vendors in our store,” Hepler says. Broadening the vendor mix contributed to the spirit of community at the event, he notes.
“You never know how many people will show up for a business’s birthday,” Hepler says. He credits the success of the open house to the fact that it celebrated future plans for the business as well as the history. “If you think about it, we celebrated 75 years of history, we talked about a transition of ownership—which actually took place across our last fiscal year, but this is our public announcement of it—[and] we symbolically broke ground. We lashed all that together. That’s pretty interesting for folks.”
In addition, Orient says, “We advertised that we were giving away a free barbecue meal to the first 200 customers. I think anytime there’s free food, it’s enticing.”
The Heplers negotiated with their contacts to obtain giveaway items. “We were looking at different alliances we could have with vendors we were currently doing business with [and those] we would like to do business with—working those relationships and finding a way to celebrate,” Orient says. “And that could be something as simple as calling your insurance company that you’ve done business with for five, 10 or 20 years and asking them to contribute some giveaways. We have a lot of vendors who weren’t featured on site but provided some giveaways just to thank the customers. Sometimes it’s just something like a promotional item with their logo—something that would give their business some exposure and recognize the relationship they’ve had with you over time.”
The Response: About 1,000 visitors attended the open house, the siblings estimate. “For a one-day event, we were very pleased with the turnout,” Orient says.
“I had probably 100-plus conversations that day,” Hepler estimates. “I met people who knew my great-grandfather and talked about him; that was pretty special.” Other conversations focused on future plans for the site; prospective vendors discussed partnership possibilities. “We had all these folks who were interested in the way ahead,” Hepler says.
About 15 family members came to the celebration, including Hepler and Orient’s two sisters, three of the siblings’ spouses and a bunch of children. Direct descendants in the fifth generation range in age from 2 to about 15; there are also some stepchildren who are older.
The Advice: Thanking the community should be a key part of a business anniversary celebration, Hepler says. “We provided some food, we provided some sale items and some free items as well.”
In addition, Hepler advises, “Have some news. Have some things you want to share that you think people will be interested in.”
Another recommendation: Try to partner with other businesses. “It didn’t cost us anything to bring the vendors in,” Hepler points out. “And it was probably a win-win for them, too.”
Copyright 2017 by Family Business Magazine. This article may not be posted online or reproduced in any form, including photocopy, without permission from the publisher. For reprint information, contact bwenger@familybusinessmagazine.com.