Episode 201: Mari Lin Pettit
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we sat down with Mari Lin Pettit of Pettit Hardware!
To watch the full episode, check it out on YouTube below. In the meantime, here’s a transcript of the conversation…
Here’s what you missed from Mari Lin Pettit…
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Taylor: Welcome to the Brad and Taylor show. Today, we have Mari Lin Pettit.
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Brad: You’re listening to The Brad and Taylor Show, a podcast that inspires entrepreneurs to pursue their passions. We’re sitting down with some of the best to learn how they got started and some lessons they learned along the way.
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Mari Lin: Hi, how are you?
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Taylor: Hi, good. How are you doing today?
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Mari Lin: It’s my pleasure to be here.
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Brad: So tell us a little bit about you, what do you do? You have a store. Tell us about that.
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Mari Lin: Oh, we have a family-owned hardware business. That’s been in my family since 1886, so it’s 135 years old this year. I’m a fourth generation. My dad was the last owner of it, and he passed away in 2003. That’s when I came in and took it over and I was going to do it for a year just to say I did it. And now it’s been 18 years.
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Brad: It’s
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Mari Lin: A little longer than a year.
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Brad: Well, how’s it been going since then? You’ve got to start it. Have you noticed anything that’s changed over the years since you started?
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Mari Lin: Well, we changed a few things around in the store. We set it up instead of everything being in little boxes where the clerk had to go get them for you, we set it up. So it was a little more user-friendly and a little more shopability and that seemed to work out better. Some of the display pieces were higher, so you really couldn’t see past them. So we took everything down so you could see the whole store and that kind of invited strolling around too. That helped a lot. We still have the same loyal customers and the same people that are in their fifties that came in when they were little kids with their grandpa. Oh, that’s reminiscing and they see the generations coming in.
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Taylor: Yes, that’s awesome.
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Mari Lin: And now, since I’ve been there 18 years, I’ve seen people bringing in their babies, and now they’ve graduated from high school.
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Brad: Yeah. That’s awesome.
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Taylor: You said you planned on being there for only a year only. What was your plan after that year?
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Mari Lin: Yeah, I was basically retired and so I was going to do this for Larkin as a child. I spent a lot of time down there. I enjoyed this hardware store and brought my friends’ bikes in and fixed them and that kind of stuff. And yeah. I liked being down there. So I thought, well, let me just run it for a year.
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Brad: So is this the only location in town to do it? Did you change buildings or is it always the same building you have?
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Mari Lin: I don’t know where they originally started, but we bought this building in 1903 from Caza checks, the men’s clothing store in Lansing. Wow. And so we’ve been there since 1903 and then we bought next door in 1905. So it’s a double storefront. We’ve been there ever since. Very nice.
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Taylor: Yeah. Thank you. I know we’ve been chatting about the business. What is the business?
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Mari Lin: It’s a hardware business.
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Taylor: You guys have all the tools, everything you would need for projects really. Right.
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Mari Lin: We have tools. We have paint, we have plumbing supplies, you know, the usual hardware, nuts and bolts and yeah. You know, with Gemma duties.
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Taylor: No, I went into your guys’ store. The first time I came to Eaton Rapids to actually apply for this job, I was getting familiar with the area. I started working here and I was looking for old casters. Oh, I couldn’t find them. And you guys have them. I was like, yes, I wanted to redo a project. So you guys had them.
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Mari Lin: Yeah, we carry all the basic stuff. He goes to the big box store and there’s a wall of 20 different choices. And the five in the middle are the ones people mostly buy. So we’re that middle section, you know, if you need something really fancy with the super fancy finish on it or something, we probably don’t have that, but we’re gonna have all the basics. Yeah. The best thing we have is we have very experienced sales clerks that can help you through your projects. And they’re very patient, they’ll take their time with you, teach you what you need to know. So that’s the biggest feature of our store, I think.
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Brad: Yeah. Definitely the customer service and the fact that they’re willing to teach you and how long they’ve been there too. I know they’ve been there a long time.
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Mari Lin: Yes. I have one gentleman that’s retired and he’s worked part-time for me for 14 years. And another, Bruce who has worked for me for over 20 years. So they know exactly what they’re talking about. Yeah. And they’re very good at helping people. We had a woman come in a few years ago and she had just bought a place and she was by herself and she needed to do some plumbing and some electrical in her bathroom. They taught her everything. They taught her how to solder. They taught her everything. She did it piece by piece and they drew it out for her, and she was so proud of herself, but she did it.
00:05:26:25 –> 00:05:32:26
Taylor: Yeah. Now if you guys don’t have a part in-store that someone’s looking for, do you guys have the option to order it and get it in?
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Mari Lin: Okay. What we do, we don’t, we’re not always successful with our supplier. Doesn’t always have what somebody wants, but yes we can. We order on a weekly basis. So people don’t have to wait more than five days. Usually.
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Taylor: That’s awesome. That’s pretty quick now.
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Brad: I like it. So since you’ve had a small town business, what would you recommend for someone else in a smaller town that has a business too, just some advice for them?
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Mari Lin: Well, mostly you just got to hang in there and you have to be frugal lots of times. When I first took the store over, there were probably five people working there and we slowly whittled it down. Well, and as my familiarity with the business, I was more active in it. I didn’t need those people as much. So you just have to watch trends and you have to try to accommodate those kinds of things and be careful, you don’t jump on something and end up eating it because nobody wants it after two weeks.
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Brad: It’s so true. That’s so true.
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Mari Lin: But it’s just you know, you really have to watch your pennies. That’s basically a small business. That’s all you can do.
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Taylor: Did you get any advice when you took over the business?
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Mari Lin: No. I just jumped in and went with it. I just jumped in and you know, a lot of it is just common sense, but you know, it wasn’t like I said, I went in there at the end of 2003, and then we had the little recession thing in 2008. There were things like, oh my gosh, I’m glad I didn’t have a crystal ball. Cause I probably wouldn’t have done this. And then you slowly come out of that and yeah.
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Taylor: Yeah. So where are you guys located?
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Mari Lin: We’re right in the middle of downtown Eaton Rapids. It’s 141 South Main Street. So it’s kind of the heart of the town right in the center.
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Taylor: Okay.
00:07:42:02 –> 00:07:44:05
Brad: That’s awesome. I like it. Tell us a little bit about the history of the building.
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Mari Lin: Well, the building is a four-storefront building. It’s called the Leonard Block Building and it was built in 1866. So in my store, we still have the original ceilings and the original floors. So when you walk on those floors, you walk where a civil war soldier probably walked, which is kind of neat. And it’s been restored. Our two storefronts. When we took it over, it had to be re-tuck pointed and kind of refurbished because those old buildings get water behind them and they pop and you have to do those things. So that’s been restored and there’s a faceplate on the top that says Leonard Block 18, 1866. Well, they took that piece down so they could do some repair work. And when they took it down on the back of it is a tombstone.
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And the irony is the day they took it down as the date on the tombstone. So the guys were going down and they went, do you know that you have a tombstone? How would I know what’s been in the face of the building? So apparently the stoneworker in town, there were few places in town that did those things and just repurposed it. But since then, since I took a rubbing of it and since Molesky did some research and found out it was this gentleman from New York and he’s, he’s buried over, on a day. I believe so.
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Taylor: That’s far from New York.
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Mari Lin: Yeah. So he came here. Yeah. Anyway, that was kind of an interesting piece that we found.
00:09:35:05 –> 00:09:36:14
Taylor: I wonder what we have in our building prep.
00:09:38:18 –> 00:09:39:29
Mari Lin: We have to start taking things apart.
00:09:41:15 –> 00:09:43:22
Taylor: Well, we did that. We did. Yeah. We didn’t.
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Mari Lin: Didn’t find anything interesting?
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Taylor: Well, not so far.
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Brad: And I remember we thought literally.
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Mari Lin: Fine. You didn’t find any old dog that exciting.
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Taylor: No tombstones. Yeah.
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Mari Lin: I didn’t find any posters pasted on your walls or anything.
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Brad: No, not in this building. No, we didn’t find that yet.
00:09:58:29 –> 00:10:04:08
Mari Lin: We did. ’em upstairs of ours before they renovated. There were some handbills and stuff like that.
00:10:05:03 –> 00:10:07:16
Brad: We found these random numbers on our brick wall.
00:10:10:02 –> 00:10:10:14
Taylor: Yeah.
00:10:10:27 –> 00:10:14:26
Brad: They’re deceased random numbers. And everyone asks, every time they go into the building, we don’t know what they are.
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Taylor: We need to find the history of it.
00:10:19:02 –> 00:10:21:28
Brad: So then we look at numbers across the whole wall and it doesn’t start at one.
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Mari Lin: Random, some code.
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Taylor: Random, but it’s not going to order. You can see.
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Brad: They’re like counting, but they don’t start at the bottom and they don’t start at like, it’s very random.
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Taylor: We’ll have to show you.
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Mari Lin: Do you know what was there before?
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Brad: No, that’s what we’re trying to figure out. Because when I was looking at a building, like this building was built after the one next door, this one was built onto that building. So it was on the outside. That would have been the outside of the building.
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It’s weird.
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Taylor: So if anyone listening has any idea, we want the history here. That’s funny. So I know you are fourth generation growing up. Did you have any idea that this is what you’re going to be doing?
00:11:11:29 –> 00:11:12:23
Mari Lin: Oh, absolutely not. No.
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Taylor: No? What did you want to be when you were a little girl?
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Mari Lin: You know, I was one of those people that was like, what’s next? Let’s just see what’s around the corner. And I’ve done lots of different things. I was a dental assistant. I worked in a professional theater doing sound and lights. I’ve been a secretary. Well, that was probably a, you know, everybody wanted to grow up and be a secretary. So I did a lot of that. And then I just, whatever came up, if it sounded interesting, you’d try it mostly. I figured if I didn’t know, I couldn’t do it, I would try it.
00:11:56:01 –> 00:11:56:20
Taylor: Yeah. That challenge.
00:11:56:21 –> 00:12:07:08
Mari Lin: Yeah. And most of the time you find out that you can figure it out and that’s the most fun. So I wasn’t really afraid of this. This wasn’t the biggest thing I ever jumped off from.
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Taylor: It’s nice though, that it’s been circled back around and you’re still in the middle.
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Mari Lin: I know. I think that’s interesting. Cause I’ve lived in California, in Texas and you know, I’ve lived all over the place and then, when you’re 18, couldn’t get out of town fast enough. So now, here I am and I’m a block away from where I grew up. Yeah.
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Brad: So true. So true.
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Mari Lin: Yeah. But I liked the town and when I came back, I saw it with different eyes. Yeah. And I thought, oh, this river’s here. We used to play in it, but I never had a canoe or anything. But I thought, gosh, the first thing I did was buy a kayak. And a few years ago we had a kayak club and there were quite a few of us. And we did a lot of that. And then having lived in California, in Dallas. So there’s really not much to walk around. Coming here, I was like, oh my gosh, I just walk and walk and walk and walk and walk. And I really appreciated the amenities that you took for granted growing up. Because they were just there. So yeah, it was fun to come back and a lot of old friends and I was able to reacquaint myself with some people that had been influential in my life that, you know, you didn’t have a chance to really express to them how important their part had been. So a lot of those people have passed now. I feel like I’m very fortunate to have been able to do that. So yeah, it’s been a real positive experience.
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Taylor: I know when you’re 18 and you just want to leave the town.
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Mari Lin: Oh Yeah. Can’t get away fast.
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Taylor: I never left.
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Mari Lin: But yeah, it’s a good place. Absolutely.
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Brad: That’s awesome. So what do you have planned for the next year? Do you have any plan for the business or anything exciting going on?
00:13:59:16 –> 00:14:50:05
Mari Lin: Nothing really specific. Kinda just have to take it a month at a time and see what happens, but we’re always open to whatever comes along. I put it in a small gift shop and so we sell things that I like: local authors’ books, different artistic things, paintings, and pottery things. And so if anybody wants to put something in on consignment, they just bring it in. And if I think it’s appropriate for the shop, then we’ll talk. But it’s kind of nice to have a place to put your layers off and have them be seen. So that’s kind of fun. And right now I have some really beautiful pottery in there.
00:14:50:09 –> 00:15:31:01
So check that out, think that’s the window on this side of it. Yes. It’s on the north, the north store.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. I like the shopping checklists.
Mari Lin: Yes, that’s right. Oh yeah. Come on over.
Brad: Right. Well, awesome. Well, Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today.
Mari Lin: Thank you. It’s been my pleasure.
Hello. Hello. Are you there? Are there, are there, Hey guys, we just wanted to thank you for listening on either a podcast or on the YouTube video here. If you guys wanted to subscribe, that would be awesome. That would mean a lot to us. If you guys could give us a five-star review as well, that would be amazing. And we’ll see you on the next one.
Check out Mari:
Pettit Hardware
pettit-hardware.hub.biz/
Facebook: @PettitHardware
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