Bucks County's oldest hardware store an anchor in Newtown

In these days of Facebook and Twitter, e-mails and texts, a simple 3-by-10-inch bumper sticker is helping Bucks County's oldest hardware store stay afloat.

The plain white stickers, with red and white stripes and black lettering, spread the message quickly and succinctly: "Save Newtown Hardware." Owner Dave Callahan has given away 2,000, depleting his first batch, and they're starting to pay dividends.

"They've certainly helped," Callahan says in the creaky and cramped brick store that's been an anchor on Newtown Borough's State Street for 142 years. "Friends in the Newtown area - customers we've had for years, who maybe started going somewhere else - have come back."

Business has improved in the last two months, he says, mostly with homeowners buying plumbing parts, light bulbs, and other items for do-it-yourself projects. "Paint sales were off, but all of a sudden they're starting to pick up a little. I'm hoping people are getting tired of the color of their walls."

But business from contractors is still down 40 percent, which forced Callahan to lay off one full-time worker and two part-timers. He has weathered tough economic times during his nearly 26 years in the business, "but never anything like this," he says. "Usually, after seven or eight months, you see it start to improve. This time, it's been two or three years."

Callahan tries to pick up the slack by doing repair work, such as screens, windows and lamps.

In that, he's not alone. Other area hardware stores are scrambling to find ways to make their budgets. Service and the little things, from watch batteries to single screws and nuts, are what customers want.

"I help with a nuts-and-bolt sale for 28 cents - I can't make a living on that," says Barry Rhoads, who has worked at Penndel Hardware for 15 years. "But they'll come back again."

When a customer asked where he could get fingerprinted for a background check, the Bellevue Avenue store added the service. "We've taken more than 1,000 fingerprints since April 1," Rhoads says. "If 25 percent of them become shoppers, we just improved our business."

Robert Wipplinger, who owns Penndel Hardware, says he's getting by because he and his retired father own the building and the Village Hardware building in Hatboro. Besides operating rent-free, they collect rent for apartments above both stores, Wipplinger says.

Langhorne Hardware's Hank Carfagno says he owns his Bellevue Avenue building and eight rental properties, including the neighboring barber shop and apartments above both businesses.

"I've been in the business for more than 50 years," Carfagno says. "There's definitely been a decline in the economy, but I don't have the overhead."

Newtown Hardware's Callahan isn't so lucky, covering increasing rent payments with declining revenue. He says he's too old - "older than 65" - to move all the nuts and bolts, tools, pipes, wheelbarrows and the rest of the inventory to a space with lower rent.

Besides, Callahan is as much a borough fixture as the Newtown Hardware House (house being a popular term in 1869, when the business started selling carriage bolts and farm equipment, he explains). He's chaired or served on numerous borough boards, committees and the Historic Association, but he's had to scale back for work. With the staff down to one other full-timer and four part-timers to run the store seven days a week, his 46-hour work weeks have ballooned to 60 hours.

"That's OK," he says. "I want to pull this thing out."

His goal is to work five more years, but will the Newtown Hardware House still be up and running?

"I think we will survive," he says. "I wonder how long the downturn will go on. It has to end soon."