- The hardware chain consolidates employment opportunities and aids long-term population of rural areas with a strategy focused on promoting local businesses and commercial relationships between real people
- Parents and children, siblings and young couples: the faces of current “Sabio” know-how modernising hardware stores
- 7 out of 10 stores are located in municipalities with less than 50,000 inhabitants, many of them close to large cities
Ordes (A Coruña), 28 April 2023. A young entrepreneur ready to reboot the family business. This is one of the profiles among those in charge of El Sabio shops. This chain of stores, created in 2021 to modernise local businesses and make them more competitive against powerful multinationals, supplies hardware, DIY, home, agricultural and gardening tools. Two years after its first store was opened, the brand’s figures show the results of its commitment to generational renewal: 50% of its stores are in the hands of parents and children, siblings or young couples, and their staff lower the median age of an ageing hardware sector, as more than 60% of individuals delivering “Sabio” know-how are under 50.
By favouring small businesses, the brand, which now has 25 stores throughout Spain, contributes to the generation and consolidation of employment in small and medium towns across the country in a sector that has been heavily impacted by closures in the past.
Thus most of its stores (seven out of every ten) are located in municipalities with less than 50,000 inhabitants, and the other 30% are found in cities or strategic locations that are well connected to urban areas. This is a snapshot of the El Sabio business model, which does not cease to grow and was conceived to promote the concept of long-standing hardware stores, providing them with the most innovative solutions in terms of both image and products and services in order to allow them to compete in an ever more challenging market.
Making a difference
“El Sabio revolutionised the market by supporting long-standing hardware stores while taking care not to alter their nature but instead to boost the differentiating value of local businesses”, the firm explains. Its first stores took a lethargic sector by surprise and brought the businesses into the future by way of new technologies, adding a broad portfolio of products and a fresh image that people fell in love with.
Generational renewal and consolidation of jobs in rural areas were two of the challenges that this entrepreneurial strategy designed to strengthen the fabric of local business focused on. Both objectives continue to be at the centre of El Sabio’s expansion plans. Indubitably, the balance between modernity and an appreciation for tradition is one of the most attractive aspects of the chain, according to its franchises.
At El Sabio Dreyma (Madrid), the Cristóbal brothers, Javier and Luis, perfectly exemplify the spirit of the brand. They both took over the business that their father had built 30 years before, and two years ago they became “Sabios”. “The firm had what we needed. It helped us a lot in terms of management and reorienting our business. We were familiar with those aspects but we knew that it had to evolve”, says Javier behind the counter of his store, located in the municipality of Villaconejos in Madrid.
We are our own bosses
Aged 31 and 28, the young men explain that despite the difficulties and “the hours that we put in”, the result is a positive one. “We are our own bosses and revenues increase year after year”, notes Javier, the eldest, who left his civil servant job at Madrid City Hall to “reinvent” the family business in the town where he was born.
Siblings, couples and young entrepreneurs personify the “Sabio” know-how profile contributing to the retention of inhabitants in rural areas and the repopulation of the empty swathes of Spain thanks to businesses with clear future prospects in places such as Sariñena (El Sabio Fidela) or Taboada (El Sabio Xesteira). These are generational renewal success stories where businesses that were stagnating or needed a 180-degree spin have been relaunched or revitalised. This is the case for Vanesa García, who manages El Sabio RiegoSur in Villanueva del Arzobispo, a town in Jaén.
A successful formula
The untimely death of her father forced Vanesa to take over the management of his store when she was 18. She was young and female in a traditionally male-dominated business. And she had to learn the trade quickly. “I crammed all the catalogues and learned all about the tools and how to use them”, she remembers. In 2022 she joined the El Sabio project because “we needed to change and find the motivation that we had lost after almost a decade in the business”.
Vanesa manages El Sabio RiegoSur with her husband, and she is no exception within the chain. Noel and Vanesa (El Sabio Roces Belón), Rubén and Yolanda (Alyxmer), Francisco and Joyce (El Sabio Comercial Grande) or Cristina and Alberto (VL Friol) are also examples of “Sabio” know-how in the hands of families.
“The lack of generational renewal is a huge problem, even more so than ageing business models, because the latter can be fixed with a good support network, training and innovation, but if people throw in the towel and close down, the local economy dies”, the firm highlights, noting that passing the baton from parents to children is also a successful formula. Evidence of this can be found in consolidated stores of the brand, such as El Sabio A Botica do Agro, El Sabio Agrolaudio, El Sabio Cherjos or El Sabio Montefrío.
