When suppliers become survivors
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Two longtime Durham feed-and-seed businesses located in two changing neighborhoods finding two different niches. All this happening in a changing world of monster chain stores and Internet buying.That's the smiley-face, thumbnail sketch for Barnes Supply at 774 Ninth St. and Stone Bros. & Byrd on West Geer Street just beyond the outfield wall of the old Durham Athletic Park.But the businesses aren't mirror images of each other. Each maintains its solvency by subtle and worrisome attention to detail that is always a work in progress.Here's a look at two plucky survivors -- two businesses run by the little guy.For the love of lawnsGeorge Davis was moving briskly through the Firestone executive training program in 1976 when the tiremaker offered him an option for 49 percent ownership in a Greensboro store.He decided to bail out instead."I didn't want some corporation hanging over my head," said Davis, a 1965 Durham High School graduate. "I loved lawn and garden."On a dare he brought Stone Bros. & Byrd, which at the time did most of its business supplying the needs of tobacco farmers. The Guilford College economics major began loading by hand 50 and 100-pound bags of fertilizer that totaled 200 to 250 tons in annual sales.Stone Bros. & Byrd set up shop at the current location in 1968 after various permutations on Parrish and Morgan streets that included Hubert W. Pickett, Claude L. and Robert L. Stone and William E. and Hubert R. Byrd.The store's Web site says the business took the Stone Bros. & Byrd name in 1914. The city directory first lists that name in 1941 at 211 Morgan St. -- back when farmers used cash, credit and barter to buy their feed, seed, buggies, wagons, churns and farm implements.Davis knew at the outset that farming's days were numbered. Cigarette packs already carried the Surgeon General's health warnings, and subdivisions were popping up where tobacco fields once reigned."You could see it coming," he said.So Davis nudged his business steadily toward lawn and garden. His last tobacco account died in 1990.That year, he said, "was one of the lowest years in terms of sales dollars, but we saw an immediate increase in profit," he says.Knowing the public's love affair with green lawns, Davis became a regular at N.C. State University's lawn and garden seminars starting in 1977. About 15 years ago he had a line of slow release fertilizer developed for cool season Piedmont lawns. His 50 percent timed-nitrogen-release fertilizer provides nutrients for lawns for four to six months as opposed to the quicker release of big name commercial fertilizers.About 12 years ago Davis had four varieties of grass seed developed whose variances ranged from full sun to 100 percent shade. The results grow in a planter outside the store's front door.What wasn't growing was downtown Durham. The trickle of business exiting downtown Durham in the '60s had become a flood and left much of the downtown and its fringes vacant by the early '90s.The arrival of chain home and garden stores in the late '80s didn't make life any easier."We shopped 'em," Davis says of checking the chains' prices. "They tricked the public into thinking they had the cheapest prices."By Davis' figuring, his bag of $13.89 slow-release fertilizer for 6,000 square feet is only pennies more than a $10 bag of quicker-release fertilizer for 5,000 square feet sold at a chain."What they didn't have was service," he says. "That's what kept us going."Stone Bros. established an Internet presence (
Net sales have increased each year, as has the store's geographic reach. Davis' oldest son Merrill, 29, is the store manager, fulfilling a childhood ambition to work alongside his father.The store is today a cramped rabbit warren of plants, feed, seeds, leaf blowers, water garden technology, country hams, gardening gloves, pickles and peanuts.A small-engine repair shop is tucked into the rear.Downtown Durham is surging back while real estate prices climb on all sides of Davis. "We've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. And now the best is yet to come," George Davis says.Adapting to the times"I like shopping local," says Jennifer Sosensky, a 15-year customer of Barnes Supply Co., as she stands by the cash register. "They make an investment in getting you what you want."The feed-and-seed store for farmers that Lee "Shorty" Barnes and his wife Alyse opened in 1946 has bobbed along on the tide of change.Plants still line the sidewalk and the bags of grass seed and fertilizer are piled high in the building's cool, back shadows.But 75 percent of the business today is pet supplies, which includes a brisk business with area universities and Research Triangle labs supplying food and bedding for test animals. Throw in a warehouse operation to distribute two national brands of pet food, and that's how the second owner, Gary George, has made it into the 21st century."It's been good to us," says George, 52, in the high-ceiling store that mixes exotic dog bones with yard ornaments and grass seed.George was a third-generation American Tobacco Co. employee until the plant closed in 1987, and he found himself studying to be a radiology technician at Durham Regional Hospital. But he didn't like radiology. In 1991, he pooled all his resources and approached "Shorty" after Barnes' daughter had taken a shot at running the business.George energetically tools around his store in shorts with ready patter to extol his business. Wind chimes tingle as he touts himself as a yard "problem-solver" and points to an array of pesticides and fungicides. Pet foods are a specialty."When Home Depot came in, we put more emphasis on pets," he says. "We thought we had it. Then here comes PetsMart ... We get a lull each time when something big opens."But the customers eventually return, and in the long run, "It hasn't hurt us," he says.As agriculture faded under "Shorty" Barnes' ownership, he began supplying research labs with food for test animals.George has continued the business and added a sideline as a distributor for Diamond and Purina pet food from a Cheek Road warehouse. The distribution takes up about 65 percent of his time.The Internet has not been a big factor in his business, George says. (
Several years ago George thought about moving to a bigger building with more parking but stayed put. Ninth Street has become an increasingly lucrative address since its resurgence began in the '70s.Now George has a problem that is both healthy and a pox: Cars crowd the front and back of his store thanks to the popularity of his neighbor, Elmo's Diner. Barnes owns both buildings."Parking is terrible," George says. "People need to be disciplined in their parking."
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When suppliers become survivors: from www.thedurhamnews.com
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