You need one screw.
Not a box of fifty. One. A specific length, a specific thread, to replace the one that snapped in your kitchen cabinet hinge.
At a giant home improvement warehouse, you will buy a package of twenty five and use one.
At McLendon Hardware, somebody pulls open a drawer, hands you the screw, and charges you a few cents.
That transaction makes almost no money. It might lose money once you count the labor.
And it is the single most important thing the store does.
Because it answers a question nobody at a big box store can answer, and that answer is worth far more than the screw.
This is a story about depth, expertise and why some small businesses survive an invasion that should have killed them.
It is also, unexpectedly, a story about how to keep a house affordable in retirement.