From hardware to community service, Cohen family left their mark on St. Louis

BY BILL MOTCHAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT

The St. Louis central corridor in the early 1900s bustled. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition was winding down, business was booming and, as employees needed reliable transportation, streetcar lines were expanding.

The streetcar workers used pickaxes, sledgehammers and other tools that often deteriorated after a grueling day laying track. Often they would toss the broken or worn tools to the curb at the end of a shift. That’s when an opportunistic entrepreneur named Morris Cohen ventured out. He collected the discarded tools and repaired them at his tool shop at Fifth Street and Delmar Boulevard. Cohen turned a nifty profit selling the rehabbed equipment.

Thus began a long, successful run of the St. Louis-based Central Hardware empire, which by 1993 had 39 stores in six states, with 3,700 employees. It ranked number 19 nationally among hardware retailers..

Cohen was good with his hands and had a gift for sales. He also was motivated to support his family after arriving in the United States as a poor immigrant in 1903.

“Morris was a Polish immigrant who came here with noth- ing and ended up leaving a legacy,” said his great-grandson Jim Cohen, Central Hardware’s president from 1987 through 1992. Members of the Cohen family not only ran the chain for 90 years, they also pioneered retail and marketing techniques still in use today. They also gave back to the community through volunteer and philanthropic efforts.

Nuts and bolts

Besides his skills in tool repair, Morris Cohen was good at retailing and dealing with customers.

“People would come in for the tools. They loved him,” said Jim Cohen, 76. “They would say, ‘Y’know, Mr. Cohen, could you get us some other items? Why don’t you have nuts and bolts?’ And he’d say, ‘Well, what do you need?’ They would reply, ‘I need a package of No. 10 screws.’ He would go out the back door of his little building, run down the alley and go in the back of a huge hardware distributor. He picked up a package of screws for a nickel, came back, put them in a bag and charged a dime.”

Morris was successful in building the Central Hardware brand, and once he started expanding, he bowed out. Cohen gave each one his four sons a store, then he moved to Jerusalem where he planned to be a rabbi. His nephew Julius ran Central Hardware until the early 1950s. That’s when Stanley Cohen took over.

Stanley Cohen (Jim Cohen’s father) was responsible for creating the brand image that still resonates with many St. Louisans. That image, of a store for the do-it-yourselfer, used taglines in its advertising that may ring familiar decades after the last store closed:

“Everything from scoop to nuts.” “Orangecoated experts.” “We saw (for cut lumber), you save.”

Stanley Cohen was a savvy businessman. He instituted greeters at the store entrance. In 1954, he was interviewed by Dave Garroway on “The Today Show” to explain the company’s latest innovation: an indoor lumber yard.

“We were the first to take what had been a traditional outdoor part of the hardware business and move it indoors,” Jim Cohen said. “After that, everybody else did it. We were the first to have centralized checkout. You used to have to check out in one department, then walk to another department to buy something else.”