Joe's Hardware Brings Old-School Customer Service To Lake Elsinore

In the era of Big Box, a family-owned hardware store business is bucking the trend – and so far it’s paying off.

Joe DeRoest, 48, owner of Joe’s Hardware in Fallbrook has successfully banked on “nuts and bolts” experience, old-school customer service, and a deep inventory to bring clientele through the door, and now he’s putting that formula to work in Lake Elsinore.

Last December, DeRoest opened his second Joe’s Hardware store -- this time in Canyon Hills on Railroad Canyon Road. A longtime Murrieta resident, DeRoest said he did his due diligence when deciding where to open shop in Southwest Riverside. He saw thousands of new homes lining Canyon Hills, and an established upscale residential community in nearby Canyon Lake, and thought, “A good hardware store would survive here.”

“The City of Lake Elsinore has been good to me,” DeRoest said of the new location. “I feel very welcomed by the community.”

Stocked on the shelves inside -- and on the patio outside -- of the 14,000-square-foot store in Lake Elsinore, Joe’s Hardware sells everything from lumber and plumbing supplies to paint and gardening gloves.

“If we don’t have it, you probably don’t need it,” is DeRoest’s motto.

Despite its new-store smell, Joe’s Hardware in Lake Elsinore brings one back to a bygone era -- before Big Orange and Big Blue stores.  

“They serve their niche,” DeRoest said of Home Depot and Lowe’s Home Improvement, “but a good hardware store is a destination. We serve the segment of the population that doesn’t want to drive far to get what they need. We’re that neighborhood store.”

DeRoest said key to his business success, however, is ensuring he has the inventory – at the right price -- to compete. He also relies on good customer service, something he learned early on.

A family man with a wife and four children, DeRoest began his hardware career in the late 1980s when his brother-in-law Hank Hornsveld offered him a job. Hornsveld was – and still is – the proprietor of the infamous Hank’s Hardware in Temecula. The store is the stuff of legends – it boasts more than 25 years in business.

“I did just about everything,” DeRoest said of those early days in training at Hank’s.

Eventually, he transferred to Hornsveld’s second store in Fallbrook to oversee operations there, and then in 2005 ended up buying that San Diego County location from his brother-in-law.

“I don’t want to divulge numbers,” but sales at the Fallbrook store more than quadrupled from 1997 to 2005 and business pretty much “takes care of itself there,” DeRoest said.

So now most of DeRoest’s time is spent building the Lake Elsinore business.

“I’m here 90 percent of the time,” he said.  “In order to be successful in the hardware business, you have to listen to the needs of the community.”

On a late midweek morning, customers at Joe’s in Lake Elsinore trickled in. DeRoest, a large gregarious man, spent time back and forth with a woman who was looking for a specific type of nut; later he hung out by the checkout counter with a patron, chewing the fat about building supplies.

DeRoest knows he has a lot of work ahead of him in Lake Elsinore, but he’s determined.

“I have such an entrepreneurial fire in my belly,” he said. “I want to make this business succeed and do (for my family) what my brother-in-law did for me.”

Joe’s Hardware is located at:

25341 Railroad Canyon Road
Lake Elsinore, CA 92532-2704
(951) 244-3800