Hardware manufacturing

Hinges, slides, pulls, locks and latches are simple stamped, cast and machined goods, and a small maker can produce a credible line — 57 of Canada's 108 hardware manufacturers have fewer than ten people. The cut is that the manufacturer does not own the customer. Richelieu Hardware, which describes itself as an "importer, manufacturer and distributor of specialty hardware", sold $1.96B in fiscal 2025, $1.74B of it to manufacturers — the cabinet shops, furniture plants and millworkers who actually consume hardware — and only $220.7M to retailers [A]. It has made 100 acquisitions to build that position. A kitchen-cabinet shop buys from one catalogue of over 145,000 items served out of 119 North American centres; it does not open an account with a single-line maker. So a new manufacturer reaches its buyers through the distributor's catalogue, at the distributor's price, beside the distributor's imported equivalent — and the distributor decides which of the two it promotes. The same structure holds at the retail end, where a big-box buyer sets the planogram. Richelieu's 10.9% EBITDA margin is earned on selection and delivery, not on making things, which says where the value in hardware sits. What remains for a domestic maker is custom architectural and specialty work sold on drawings, which is a job shop under another name and is not a distinct path. Software for metal shops is screened separately.