John & Julia Royall

Couple make Royall Ace Hardware store success with work ethic and reaching out in Christian charity to East Cooper and beyond

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

Julia and John Royall, owners of Royall Hardware, are fixtures on the Mount Pleasant scene, but they don't take that role too seriously as they are photographed in a take-off on Grant Wood's 'American Gothic.'

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

Offering coffee from a Nicaraguan co-op became a passion for Royall after his first mission trip there.

The Royall family — John Edward, Julia, Robert, John and William — at Robert's graduation from the Art Institute of Atlanta in June.

John Royall (right) and brother Robbie, who also has worked at Royall Ace Hardware for years, at a washtub on part of the family's 40 acres on Wakendaw Creek in the early 1950s.

John Royall, who thinks he's on the left at the bow, and others ride Wakendaw Creek when it was nearly wilderness. Of his childhood, Royall says: 'It was a very idyllic life. Nobody had any money, but we raised vegetables and caught fish and shrimp. We had a good time.'

The "mom and pop" behind Royall Ace Hardware store — which is an institution in Mount Pleasant — have flourished for more than three decades despite competition by big-box discount retailers and the Internet. But there's a simple reason for that.

Julia and John Royall's recipe for success boils down to good, old-fashioned, common-sense practices: work hard, know, serve and appreciate your customers, count your blessings, look out for opportunities, be frugal, humble and charitable, take care of Mother Earth, treat your employees well and, above all, honor God.

Their busy Royall Hardware has been an anchor for the East Cooper community since John bought Willard Hardware, which now houses East Cooper Sporting Goods, in September 1976 and expanded nearby into its current location in 1990.

That site seems fitting, as well, for a community's hardware store. It's on Mount Pleasant's unofficial main street — the Coleman Boulevard/Ben Sawyer Boulevard corridor — and at the eastern terminus of Interstate

526.

While Julia and John both grew up the Charleston area, they may just as well have been worlds apart.

Julia Middleton is the daughter of a civil engineering professor at The Citadel. She attended Ashley Hall and Winthrop College, where she graduated with a degree in accounting and economics.

John comes from one of Mount Pleasant's longtime families (Royall Avenue was named for his uncle, R.V. Royall) and was raised in what was then the country, about 40 acres on part of Wakendaw Creek that now make up chunks of Somerset Point and Point Pleasant subdivisions. He was in the first graduating class of the then-recently merged Porter and Gaud schools and went to St. Andrews College, where he received a degree in English.

Their paths never knowingly crossed until they met at a party on the night before the Ford-Carter presidential election, discovered they had mutual friends and a common interest in a local hardware-store staple: Pawleys Island Hammocks. Julia's grandparents, the Lachicottes, started the business, and John was selling them.

Julia, who shares a love of singing with John, openly admits, "I was immediately attracted to his beautiful voice." She also admired his confidence and courage. John, who had put in two years in the Navy in late 1960s and five years selling boats in the Midwest, risked $25,000 in savings and some of his creek property to buy the hardware store.

Their early dates may not sound conventionally romantic.

Julia had choir practices at St. Michael's downtown on Wednesday nights. John met her afterward, and they went out for dinner. Then they headed to the hardware store, where Julia would help John with accounting for a week's worth of "payables and receivables."

Julia jokes, "He did have a chance to check out whether my bookkeeping skills were up to standard."

One year after meeting, they were married and would go on to have three sons — John Edward, Robert and William. While both Julia and John share a common passion for singing, their biggest common denominator is their Christian faith, which permeates all aspects of their lives.

John feels that God has directed him throughout his life journey, giving him experiences that put him where he is today. His decision to go into the hardware business originated when he was just a boy, and the family got up early on Saturday mornings to go to Coleman's Hardware store in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant to get seeds, fertilizer and other supplies.

"It was a good ol' hardware store. With the nails, wood floors — it just smelled good to me," he says. "Looking back at it, the seed was planted right there. I didn't know it was happening, but I believe the Lord directs your life and has a purpose for you."

Despite the seeming competitive disadvantage, Royall Hardware is closed on Sundays. The only exception was on the Sunday after Hurricane Hugo in September 1989. The store had received a shipment of supplies, and people were in need of them.

Regarding closing on Sunday, "If you can't make it in six days, you don't need to be doing this (retail)." Then he apologizes for bragging, but adds, "We do three times as much business in our square footage in six days as the average store does in seven days."

The Royalls and Royall Hardware have always been more than just a business. They strongly believe in giving back, whether it's providing youths with jobs, giving supplies and gift certificates to nonprofit and volunteer causes, and more recently, reaching out beyond the boundaries of their immediate community.

Recent mission trips by John and other members of Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church to Nicaragua in the past five years sparked a fair-trade arrangement with an organic coffee cooperative that John dubbed "Their-Bucks Coffee," now sold at Royall and Sweetgrass hardware stores and Piggly Wiggly stores in Mount Pleasant.

Both John and Julia, now ages 61 and 57, enjoy participating in mission trips and have interests other than spending the remainder of their lives in the hardware business. They plan to continue on long enough to see whether one of their sons, or possibly a like-minded business person, wants to take it over.

So far, John and Robert are into graphic design, and William is studying choral music education.

"They are all off on their own journeys. They have all worked in the store. Whether they are interested (in taking it over) is yet to be seen, and I'd hate to bail out before they decide they want to. ... For now, I'll hang in there awhile and see how it goes."

Reach David Quick at 937-5516 or dquick@postandcourier.com.