About Us

Jim and Lynn Dominic are both from Northern New York.  They have been married for 18 years and have two children, a thirteen year old son, Dustin and a eight year old daughter, Emma.  Five years ago if you would have asked the Dominics' what they would be doing for work it would not have been owning their own business.  They both worked at a Pharmaceutical Co. together on a weekend shift were they were allowed to spend four days a week with their children and loved every minute of it.  In the fall of 2005 they learned that their employer was going to be closing its doors over the next few years.  So the Dominics' decided that Jim would start looking elsewhere for employment right away and Lynn would hold on there.  After Jim had interviewed a few places he told Lynn he was not finding anything he could see himself happy doing.  A few days later during another discussion of what they were going to do since they did not want to relocate out of the area Jim mentioned he heard a local hardware store was looking to sell out, Lynn just about fell over when he asked her to think about them owning their own store.  This hardware store had been in Ellenburg for a very long time, it had a great customer base and an awesome reputation with the local area.  After a few weeks of debate between them weighing their options, they realized they wanted this opportunity, it meant working side by side with each other, being able to be with their kids on a daily basis almost 24/7.  This was a chance of a lifetime, so by June of 2006 they opened the doors to their own store.  Jim and Lynn along with Jim's parents, Lynn's parents and one employee, Bruce Guay, who had been with the two previous employers for over 30+ years started their new business.  They worked hard at trying to bring more merchandise in every week to draw more customers to the store.  They listened to what customers were asking for and as each month passed the business was picking up more customers every day.  They had started making improvements to the store immediately to make more room for more merchandise.

What they didn't realize at the time was that they would be hit by a devastating fire on the afternoon of January 20, 2009 that destroyed the business.  They lost everything, luckily everyone escaped the fire without injury.  They didn't know what they were going to do, everyone was devastated.  By the next morning they had their minds made up after customers and the local community members telling them that they had to rebuild.  Everyone was so great during this time.  With the help of family, local community members, and customers Jim had already lined up trailers to house their merchandise, a office building for a store, and propane to make sure customers had heat for their homes.  They had deliveries by the following week filling up all the buildings they had available.  They started looking into where and how fast they could build a new store plus still run the makeshift store.  Within a couple months they had found a new location located on Rt. 11 next to another well known business, Phil's Chevrolet.  After working out the details with the owner of Phil's Chevrolet they were on their way to building their new hardware store.  During the summer months though they suffered one more devastating loss, their worker, Bruce, that had been there before them was injured and could no longer work and was forced into early retirement.  So the Dominics were lucky enough to find a young local gentlemen, Chad LaBombard, that had just graduated from school and was looking for work.  With hard work on everyones part, the Dominics were finally getting settled into their new store by September of 2009 and they opened their doors by the end of the month to their new store located on Route 11 just a few minutes from the old location.