Lehman's Hardware

The 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) facility bills itself as a "Low Tech Superstore" and a "Purveyor of Historical Technology", both of which are reflected in their motto, "For a Simpler Life".

The quarter-mile-long structure is made up of the remnants of a log cabin and three pre-Civil War buildings, including a hand-hewn barn.

It is located in a tri-county area of Northeast Ohio that is home to the nation's largest population of Amish, some 56,000 in number.

Other events that increased Lehman's customer base include the Year 2000 problem, the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the northeast blackout of 2003.

[6] Besides the Amish, tourists, and jittery citizens, the store is a resource for homesteaders, missionaries, environmentalists, survivalists, and doctors in developing countries, to purchase items needed for simple living.

The Akron Beacon Journal reported in 2011 that though now in his eighties, Jay Lehman was still serving as chairman of the business and came to the store every day to interact with customers.

[5] Lehman's built most of this addition inside an 1849 barn moved from Orrville, Ohio, and reassembled at the store site, using the original hand-hewn timbers and wooden pegs.

[5][7] Lehman's asked an Amish-staffed construction company to perform the deconstruction and reconstruction to honor the store's Amish heritage and give the structure the same integrity as it had when first built.

In the case of cast iron wood-burning parlor stoves, the Amish only accept the product in black, so Lehman's arranges special manufacturer runs, typically buying a three-year supply at a time.

[3] Lehman's also deals in replacement parts for many of their products, tracking them down from individual manufacturers, or at times reverse engineering them.

[citation needed] Their YouTube channel has more than 100 videos, including one of a store employee explaining how to use a wood stove that has received more than 600,000 hits.

In the late 1980s, Lehman's discovered a new market for their products when they were contacted by a property master trying to locate a cast iron stove for the film Back to the Future Part III.

The 50-year flood was caused by thawing temperatures, an ice and snow pack that clogged a five-foot culvert that drained water away from the store site, and a storm that brought 1/2 inch of rain in less than 15 minutes.

Hearing word of the flood, many members of the community turned out to help, offering labor, equipment or food for the workers.