Small-town cornerstone becomes state’s retailer of the year

By Kate Meadows, for Pigeon605

Sam Olson never set out to own a hardware store in rural western South Dakota.

In fact, when Buffalo Hardware came up for sale in 2014, he was in his final year of pursuing a business degree at Black Hills State University.

Little did he know that, nine years later, he would own five businesses in his hometown of Buffalo and be named Retailer of the Year by the South Dakota Retailers Association for his own Buffalo Hardware.

Olson grew up in Buffalo, helping his parents, Tim and Laura Olson, run a local construction business they started in the 1980s. When his parents called him at BHSU in 2014 to report that the local hardware store was for sale, they weren’t just delivering news — they were encouraging their son to commit to his long-term business path and recognize a golden opportunity to give back to his community. Olson’s family had done business with Buffalo Hardware for 20 years, and it was a business they didn’t want to lose on their local Main Street.

The timing was right; the Olsons knew their son wanted to return to Buffalo after college. As a young man, Olson had traveled the country competing in rodeos. He said he saw enough of the country to know Buffalo was where he wanted to be and where he eventually wanted to raise his family.

“I always assumed I’d just go back into the construction business at some point,” Olson said.

But he also knew an opportunity when he saw it.

He purchased Buffalo Hardware in July 2014, freshly minted with a business degree and no real-world experience in business ownership, outside of his family’s construction business.

But real-world experience or no, one stark fact was not lost on Olson: With many in the baby boomer generation retiring, the challenges to keep rural America running strong will get only more real. Olson recognizes he is part of the next generation to take charge.

“We got into the hardware industry to be sure that Buffalo was a viable place to live for generations to come,” he said.

Longtime customer and local rancher Billy Clanton said it’s Olson’s community-mindedness that sets Buffalo Hardware apart as a small local business.

“More than anything, what I admire is their involvement in the community – not just the owners, but they encourage their employees to be involved in community organizations as well,” Clanton said. “For a small town like Buffalo, you need a core group of volunteers to keep things going.”

Not much has changed at Buffalo Hardware since Olson took it over a decade ago. He knows his customers because he has grown up with many of them – ranchers like Clanton who fix their own fences and build and repair their own pole barns, the local service providers who need plumbing and electrical supplies, the hunters restocking their boxes of bullets.

“A lot of people have had a lot to do with it (our success),” Olson said. “Buffalo Hardware is a corner store on Main Street that everyone is used to.”

Clanton comes to the hardware store for just about everything. He buys ranching supplies there and specific types of barbed wire. His wife buys supplies and products for their home. When they built a new home in 2018, Clanton said 80 percent to 90 percent of the materials came from Buffalo Hardware.

Olson credits his employees’ community-centered focus for keeping Buffalo Hardware a place where locals continue to want to do business. This is, in a way, intentional.

“We’ve hired people with the values that match ours,” Olson said, “people who want to see Buffalo do well.”

At Buffalo Hardware, customers appreciate – and have come to expect – service at a more zoomed-in level. That’s what happens when you live 70 miles from the nearest big-box store, he added.

Shaine Odell has worked as the store manager at Buffalo Hardware for more than seven years. Originally from Camp Crook — 22 miles west of Buffalo, population 60 — Odell is no stranger to town. He has seen firsthand the importance of keeping a large variety of products in stock at Buffalo Hardware, to keep supplies local to the store’s customers.

If the store doesn’t have what a customer is looking for, employees search for it. They make an effort to find it and get it in quickly.

“Our whole staff does an amazing job,” Olson said. “Our customers are treated like people. There are real connections, and a lot of those connections run deep.”

Odell said he is grateful for the opportunity to work for Olson.

“He gives us a lot of opportunities to grow the business and (at the same time) keep the focus on local,” Odell said.

Since purchasing Buffalo Hardware in 2014, Olson has acquired other small businesses in town. In 2016, he purchased Buffalo Ranch Supply, and  in 2018, he bought what is now Olson Propane. He acquired a fuel business in 2019 and named it Olson Fuels.

Sam Olson and his wife, Caitlyn

The goal was never to own multiple small businesses, Olson insists. Instead, the goal is to help keep Buffalo a thriving place for small businesses and a place where people who grow up there have a reason and opportunity to stay.

“These are family businesses,” Olson said. “We’re all in it together. … We don’t want a bunch of empty storefronts in Buffalo. It helps the town when the dilapidated buildings get revitalized.”

Someone took notice, enough to nominate Buffalo Hardware for South Dakota Retailer of the Year.

Olson was oblivious to the nomination – and to the award itself – until he received the congratulatory phone call informing him that Buffalo Hardware had won the award.

“It was pretty fun and made for quite a surprise,” he said.

Hardware store staff traveled with Olson to Pierre to accept the award in January. According to Olson, receiving the honor would not have been the same had his employees not been there with him.

“They’re really the ones that deserve it,” he said.

Now, with wife Caitlyn and young sons Bray and Grant, Olson is living a dream. It’s a dream he could not have imagined as a college student working on his business degree.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d own a hardware store,” he said.

But it’s a dream that is wrapped up in serving a community and doing one’s part to take care of it – values he picked up from his parents, who couldn’t bear to see their beloved Main Street hardware store become a forgotten, empty storefront.