It was a sad day in our neighbourhood the day "Bill's store" closed. It too was a hardware store where if you needed one bolt, you could buy - one bolt! Not a blister pak of 12.
His lease was up for renewal and the plaza it was in wouldn't give him anything less than a 10 year lease. He knew that a HUGE chain hardware store was coming in about a year, so he opted to close instead. It's a real loss.
Now I go to the next closest SMALL hardware store, it's about 2 miles away, instead of that said chain store, which is 2 blocks away. It's a matter of principle!
Same reason I travel out of town to a lovely quilt store instead of giving my business to the closest store where the owner doesn't know the meaning of the word - pleasant.