Find the unique at Wink’s

Published 12:00 am Sunday, September 11, 2016

Everyone in the city who owns a home or works on a project must go through a rite of passage before truly calling themselves a Portlander. They need to visit W.C. Winks Hardware in the Central Eastside Industrial District.

And they need to pull a number from the red dispenser on the way to the back of the store.

Pulling a number and chatting with the staff at the service counter is the key to unlocking decades of knowledge in a unique Portland establishment. They have hardware that you just won’t find anywhere else in the city. Winks isn’t like other hardware stores, and certainly not like a Home Depot or Lowe’s. While the big box stores focus on the 20 percent of hardware products that they know 80 percent of their customers will buy, Winks focuses on the other 80 percent of products that only 20 percent need. Okay, maybe 10 percent need.

Looking for a unique spring to repair a critical machine? Some giant rope? How about some iron rivets from the era of Rosie the Riveter? When you can’t find the part you need to finish your project, anyone who’s been around Portland for long will tell you that Winks is the place to go.

The inventory runs deep, with shelves of items that simply aren’t made anymore. There’s a section on obsolete fasteners — nuts, bolts and screws that have thread patterns that are no longer used, for example. They also have adapters that can make those fasteners work with hardware that is more modern. Downstairs is the Spring Room, where the shelves are packed floor to ceiling with thousands of different types of springs.

The staff won’t want to hear about the product that you think you need, they want to hear about the project that you’re working on, or the problem that you’re trying to solve. There are no aisle markers in the store. They don’t need them, because they’re never going to send you off on your own. Winks’ employees are well tenured, shall we say, with several touting decades of time in the store.

“They call a number, and you get one-on-one help the whole time,” says Jon Hearron, Winks’ President. “To us that’s key, because we’re focusing on the projects, not just the products,” he adds.

Most of Winks’ customers come from the commercial and industrial sector, although they are great mentors to retail customers who are flummoxed by some detail of their projects. They serve property managers from across the region that need just the right parts to keep their vintage buildings true to historical standards.

“The key is fix and repair,” says Hearron. Customers rely on the depth of knowledge of employees like Product Manager Arti Lilien, who came to Winks after working in his family’s hardware stores in Brooklyn, New York.

“He’s the hardware braintrust of this place,” says Hearron. “We also learn a lot from our customers. There’s an awful lot of knowledge within these walls.”

Winks serves industrial customers who need to keep their machines humming or convert equipment from one use to another. In that way, Winks supports sustainability by eliminating the disposal of old equipment, and the need for businesses to buy new machinery.

The store is closed on weekends, to the consternation of some online reviewers, but the hours reflect the shop’s professional and industrial customer base, and its location in the inner city. “This is an industrial part of town,” Hearron says, “this is where we belong.”

Winks isn’t the oldest hardware store in Portland. That distinction belongs to Chown Hardware, which opened its doors in 1879; just 20 years after Oregon became a state.

William C. Winks opened the store in 1909 after previously supplying gold rush prospectors. He started in Portland with a stack of galvanized buckets and $1,100, according to company lore. That first store was in Southwest Portland at 14th and Washington, where it supplied Portland through the Great Depression and two world wars. That store survived through good times and bad times, but it couldn’t stand in the way of progress, and progress came in the form of the I-405 freeway.

The freeway construction forced the store to move in 1962 to 903 N.W. Davis St., in what is now the Pearl District. That’s where it stayed until 2001, when it moved across the river to its current location at 200 S.E. Stark St. The Pearl’s changing landscape may have been one reason for the move, but the new space also gave the store more room to grow.

William Winks passed away just as World War II was ending in 1945. By 1956, his daughter Jane Kilkenny took the store’s helm. She led the Winks hardware team for decades, in an era when the Pearl was a tough warehouse and industrial district.

“She was so determined to keep it going,” Hearron tells the Business Tribune. “Everyone here loved and respected Jane Kilkenny.” In 1991, a third generation took the reins, when Anne Kilkenny moved up to lead the Winks team. In 2004, Jon Hearron began a buyout of the store.

Hearron sees his role not as an owner, but as the caretaker of a Portland institution. “We have a responsibility to our customers to have these products,” he says, “Who else would carry this stuff?” Change is constant, but it comes at a slower pace at Winks. Hearron and his staff make sure change doesn’t outpace the store’s ability to closely manage its culture.

In some ways time stands still at W.C. Winks Hardware. There are still boxes on the shelf with three red stripes written with a felt-tip pen to indicate that Jane Kilkenny inventoried them. In other ways, it has joined the modern world, with transactions logged on mobile tablets and boxes tagged with barcodes.

What’s next for Winks? Think evolution, not revolution. “Tomorrow is just another day,” Hearron tells the Business Tribune, “We keep it in perspective.”

W.C. Winks Hardware

Established: 1909

Business: Commercial and Retail Hardware store

Current management: Jon Hearron, President

Location: 200 S.E. Stark St., Portland; Since 2001

Hours: 7:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. M-F. Closed weekends.

Employees: 18

Claim to Fame: Extensive supply of obsolete fasteners and hardware

Web: winkshardware.com

John M. Vincent is a third-generation Oregon journalist and a staff writer for U.S. News & World Report. Reach him at JMVincent2848@gmail.com or @OregonsCarGuy on Twitter.