New Lumber and Hardware, one of the oldest family-owned businesses in Federal Way, will close its doors this summer after 60 years of operation.

It’s the end of an era for co-owners and brothers Jim and Bill Eichholtz.

“Four weeks from now when I see a bare shelf it’s going to start hitting me,” Bill Eichholtz said. “It’s losing something very dear and very much a part of you.”

Both brothers said the closure wasn’t entirely unexpected — things have been slowing down for a decade.

“Kind of the history of … our going out of [business] sale really started in 1995 when Home Depot opened in Federal Way,” Jim Eichholtz said. “Not that we were thinking of going out of business then, but as I look back that was the first problem.”

On top of the arrival of a nearby chain hardware store came the dot-com bust of 2000 and the 2008 recession. In 2009, their business suffered due to long-term roadwork in front of the store.

“That really hurt us, and we never really recovered from that. And then, I got old,” he said.

The brothers began a liquidation sale on April 30, with red and yellow signs blaring the same ominous messages: “Everything must go!” and “Store closing sale!”

Shoppers who have supported the family-owned business have been coming in surprised. Mike Chapman, a homeowner who has been shopping there for 20 years, said he tries to support local businesses for the relationships he forms there.

“For New Lumber and Hardware, if you went and bought some lumber out of the yard there’d always be somebody to help you load it, and you get to pick your boards,” Chapman said. “I had to go get some plywood yesterday and I had to pretty much load it all by myself because there’s no one at Home Depot to do it.”

Steve Tinsley, who operates Tinsley Construction, has worked with the store for 25 years. He said he prioritizes local businesses over corporate entities.

“I’ll be sad to see that go, but I’m glad for them,” Tinsley said. “Jim gets to retire and do some of the things he wanted to do. … Jim and Bill are probably two of the best people you could ever know in your whole life,” he said. “It’s hard to find anybody else in the whole world that’s nicer than they are.”

At 66, Jim Eichholtz expects to retire. It’s been 40 years since he last had a Saturday off, or two weeks of vacation, he said.

“Not that it’s sad, not that I’d change anything,” he said. “I did try to make most of my kids’ ball games and I got to a lot of them, but if it was a Little League game on a Saturday afternoon, I probably didn’t make that one. There is some freedom to owning your own business, but not much.”

His brother, however, still has a career ahead of him — he’s just not thinking about it yet.

“My heart and soul have been solely into this business and until this is done and gone, I can’t even think about what is next,” Bill Eichholtz said. ”After this is done and gone I’m going to be emotionally and physically drained and I will need some time off.”

He said owning his own business is gratifying, and he loves helping people. He was always drawn to the job, in part, because of a desire to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Their father, Philip Eichholtz, founded the business in 1954. He had worked in lumber yards around Washington and Oregon before landing in Federal Way at 30854 Pacific Highway S.

“There was hardly anybody here and just one stoplight,” Jim Eichholtz said. “And they struggled for a good 10 years because there was not a lot of population to support them.”

Philip Eichholtz died in 2013.

“He was a smart guy and he knew business,” Bill Eichholtz said. “He worked extremely hard, harder than Jim and I ever worked at it — but we’ve also worked extremely hard.”

The housing boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s and work with local contractors until the mid-1990s made the business a success, but it was an apartment building project in Sand Point, Alaska, that was their largest-ever sale more than 25 years ago.

“We put in kitchen sinks and bathroom sinks and toilets because they didn’t have anything in Sand Point,” Jim Eichholtz said. “That was the biggest sale I’ve ever made.”

The job totaled around $100,000. Fast forward to today and the business mostly helps with remodels and repairs,  albeit a variety of them.

After 2008, fewer homes were built and the number of contractors dwindled. Ten years ago the store made 20 sales in the first hour of business, and it’s down to around three now, Jim Eichholtz said.

“A lot of the homeowners only come to us when they have a problem,” he said. “What we did 20 years ago is different than what we’re doing today.”

For Bill Eichholtz, his takeaway from the closure of New Lumber and Hardware is that it’s important to maintain local businesses.

“The thing is, if you like a store or like a business, you need to support that place or you may lose it,” he said. “And once it’s gone, it’s gone.”