Our Story

Fairview Hardware and Lumber were originally owned by Bo-ton Industries (Bob Handrich, Clayton Miller, Doug Winton, and Ray Swartzendruber). In February of 1976 Ray purchased Fairview Hardware and his son-in-law, Paul, moved his family from Harrisonburg, VA to manage the hardware and gradually purchase it from Ray. From the beginning, Fairview Hardware was part of HWI (Currently known as Do it Best Corp), a member owned co-operative that increased individual store’s buying power.

At that time the Fairview Food Market and the hardware both occupied the building that is currently Fairview Food Market on the NE corner of M-33 & M-72. It was actually divided diagonally from the NE corner to the SW corner! The sales floor was 2600 sq. feet.

In 1978 the Fairview Hardware Annex was added across the street. This allowed expansion of the lawn and garden, stove and major appliance departments and added small engine repair.

The next step was a new building located next to the feed store. In the winter of 1981 the hardware moved into a new 7200 sq ft sales floor and the Fairview Food Market could now expand into the rest of the other building. In 1994 the feed store was gutted to add more room to the sales floor.

In 1998 there were more changes with the addition of the Rental Department.  During this time HWI also transitioned to Do It Best Corp.

In 2008 the Repair Center building was changed to accommodate moving the Rental Center in with the Repair Center.  This transition increased our floor space to 11,000 square feet and allowed many more products on the sales floor.

As Paul began to talk about retirement, his daughter Marika wanted to ensure that the store continued to provide full time jobs and to give generously to the community.  In June of 2001 she returned to Fairview and worked in the role of Assistant Manager.  Marika is currently the store Manager and the transition of ownership to the next generation has begun.  We look forward to serving our community for many more years to come.