North Salt Lake » Cameron Sidwell of Utah's South Fork Hardware is out to show once again there is still a place for neighborhood stores in an industry dominated by the likes of Lowe's and Home Depot.

So much so that he recently purchased the This Is the Place Ace Hardware location in North Salt Lake. The store, which will soon take on the South Fork Hardware name, is the seventh in Sidwell's growing chain of stores that stretches from Brigham City to Fillmore and from Kamas to Tooele.

“There's a new Lowe's store just a couple of miles from here, but I'm not too concerned,” he said Tuesday at the North Salt Lake location. “We'll be very successful if those who live nearby and have home-improvement projects think of coming here first, instead of driving another four miles or so down the road.”

And that strategy appears to be working.

Opening one of the gray plastic drawers on the nuts-and-bolts aisle near the back of the store Tuesday morning, Scott Poulsen said he was looking for a washer for a part on his pickup -- a fixer-up vehicle he describes as an ongoing project.

“I live nearby, so this is the first place I always stop,” Poulsen said. “They usually have what I need, and if they don't, then I'll go somewhere else.”

Sidwell is relatively new to the hardware business having acquired his first store five years ago when he bought a commercial real estate property in Huntsville. Since then he has operated under the premise his stores will be successful if he keeps a tight rein on costs, which in most cases means owning his own buildings.

And to boost sales, each of his stores attempts to exploit niche markets by offering products and services that appeal to the residents in the communities they serve.

Sidwell said one of the things that appealed to him about the North Salt Lake store was that the previous owner had established a thriving business offering cooking classes and selling kitchen wares. “You could tell just by looking that that part of the business was doing real well,” he said, pointing out the store also carries food storage products and a variety of lawn-and-garden merchandise.

South Fork Hardware purchased the store at 1075 N. 500 East in North Salt Lake from Dennis Berry, a former airline executive who got into the hardware business six years ago. He recently returned to the airline industry, said his son, Todd, who will be managing the store for South Fork.

“Sales were doing real well at this store but they fell off some after the economy went bad,” Todd Berry said.

Unlike the store's previous owner, who primarily offered Ace brand products, Sidwell hopes to boost the store's sales by offering a wider a variety of national brand products. And the vendor's of those products will be taking care of much of the North Salt Lake store's inventory.

“Each of them, whether they supply paint or plumbing products, know more about what sells and what customers will want than I ever could,” Sidwell said. “They're really the experts.”

Sidwell said that within the next two to three weeks the Ace Hardware sign will be replaced by a sign bearing the South Fork name. “It is on order. It is going to be one of those LED reader boards. One of the things we want to do with it is to let people know when our cooking classes will be held.”

steve@sltrib.com