B & Q

It is with great sadness that there USED to be a hardware store in every neighbourhood in Edinburgh. With the event of big box stores all but a select few closed down over a decade ago. This is my local store now and I am puzzled as some things are cheap here and others don’t make sense.
The cheapest plastic plant pot is £2.99 but you can buy a bucket (which is bigger, made out of better plastic and has a metal handle) for £1. Just drill some holes in the bottom and you have yourself a plant pot with handle! Success!
Pack of screw hooks will set you back a fiver for 10 little hooks. The pricing structure really makes no sense. I mean you can kind of imagine how much things cost to produce in China so you would expect that the margins they hope to achieve are with a certain range of say a few hundred per cent. This doesn’t hold true though as the margins on some things are even exponentially higher than others. A couple of wood screws in a bag will cost more than £3 but if you want a thousand it isn’t much more expensive.
If you are actually in the trade/​semi pro hobbyist they take better care of you, mainly because you actually have options to source your products. There are other ‘trade oriented’ businesses that sell wood, sheetrock and other building supplies, most household consumers don’t realise they could get much more for the same price. However for the home consumer you are well and truly milked. All the hardware stores have closed down so where else are you going to buy anything. Gotta admire the business model though. Success!

Although this B+Q is out of the way by the water of Leith, I prefer it to all the others. The garden centre is small but the plants are always healthy unlike a lot of hardware shop plants. I’ve always found the staff here very helpful. As a smaller shop thay don’t have all the really big stuff that the Newcraighall B+Q carries, but I’m never in the market for sit on mowers anyway. They seem to know what stock they carry and what to do with it. Parking is always easy.