The store at the southwest corner of Second Avenue and Main Street in Boulder has long been a hardware store, and now it has a new distinction: business of the year.
Hardware Hank was named the 2021 business of the year by the Jefferson Local Development Corporation and was recognized for the award at the JLDC’s annual dinner on Oct. 20 in Whitehall. The award, according to a plaque presented to Cory Kirsch, Hawdware Hank’s owner, recognized the longtime hardware store “for being a progressive business committed to excellence.”
At the store on Tuesday morning, Kirsch, who also serves as a Jefferson County Commissioner and as the chief of the Boulder-Bull Mountain Rural Volunteer Fire Department, said this was the first time the business had received the award, calling it “a big honor.”
“It was nice going down there and getting a little recognition, which I try to deflect off to my employees,” he said, noting that they keep the store running when he’s not there.
Kirsch’s father bought the store in the 1970s, he said, but “it’s been a mercantile forever.” Kirsch graduated from Jefferson High School in 1992 and began working for his father at Hardware Hank in 1996, after a couple years each in college and working as a heavy equipment mechanic in the Air Force. In 1999 he bought the business outright, and now he’s “been at it 25 years—hard to believe.” He attributed the award “probably just to the longevity and our commitment to serving the community.”
That longevity has been growing more difficult to sustain, though. When his father bought the store, he said, mining and logging were “huge drivers” of the local economy, but logging declined in the ’80s and mining mostly dried up over the past 15 years. And then the Montana Developmental Center closed.
Boulder, he said, is “slowly losing every bit of the economy.” Under those circumstances, he said, it’s a “pretty big thing” to stay open when competition from big-box stores and large corporate hardware stores can be found a short drive north or south in Helena and Butte.
So, what keeps Hardware Hank open?
“[We] can’t take all the credit for it—without our customers, we wouldn’t be here, for sure,” he said.
