A big box home improvement store needs a lot of people nearby.
Not a preference. A requirement. The building is enormous, the inventory investment is enormous, and the store needs a large population within a short drive to generate the sales that justify both.
Which means below a certain market size, the big box does not come. The numbers simply do not work, and the company knows it.
Enormous amounts of American geography sit below that threshold.
Small towns. Rural counties. Places where people still build houses, repair barns, replace roofs and need lumber.
A Texas company has been serving exactly those places since 1927, and the business it built looks nothing like the one you find off an interstate exit in a metro area.