114-Year-Old Hardware Store Thrives Under New Ownership by Alison Bailey
O
lympia Supply Company is among the oldest continuously operating businesses in downtown Olympia. It has not always been in its current location on the corner of 7th and Columbia, but it was owned and operated by the same family for four generations up until 2017.
The Bean family opened Olympia Junk, as it was originally called, on the corner of Legion and Columbia in 1906. They moved into the current location in the 1940s, well after the name change. The building that houses the business was built to suit the store. In fact, it is the building that carries the name Olympia Supply, which explains why the True Value signs came down and the Ace Hardware signs went up when the Beans decided to sell the business.
Today the store is owned by the Chambers family and managed by Sandi Stratton. Jeff Bean hired Stratton in 1999. She worked as a cashier when she started. They had just decided to build the two-station cash register counter and she manned one of those stations. Stratton has spent the last two decades learning and sharing information about home improvement and commercial building supplies. She loves the fact that she’s been at the job for over twenty years and continues to learn new information about hardware and how it’s used. “It’s been really fun,” Stratton says.
In 2017, the Bean family was ready to sell the store. The Chambers family stepped up to buy the store and continue operating it. Stratton has been a familiar face to dozens of Olympia residents and businesses. She’s excited about the direction the Chambers family is taking the business. They continue to offer an unusually wide selection of pipe, pipe fittings and steel and have expanded their paint and color matching services to accommodate the needs of commercial-scale contractors. Olympia Supply Company has always offered
Olympia Supply got its bright blue paint job in 2013. Photo by Poppi Photography.
