Emporium’s Bad News Sends a Chill : Van Nuys: Employees and customers feel jilted and mournful as they learn the original store will close with the rest of the hardware chain.

At the Builders Emporium in Van Nuys, where the 97-store do-it-yourself chain was launched 47 years ago, a day of brisk hardware business Wednesday was tarnished by confusion, sorrow, anger and anxiety over the announcement that the firm is going out of business.

Longtime employees and loyal customers alike spoke of feeling jilted by a company whose constancy they had hoped was as great as theirs.

“I raised three kids by myself from that store,” said salesman Paul Sewell of Pacoima. “All I make is $11.49 (an hour) and I been there close to 29 years, but I survived. I don’t know what else I’m going to do. I got an application for Home Base.”

“It’s too bad,” said Sandra Moore of Van Nuys, a Builders shopper for the last 28 years, as she rolled a cart full of bamboo screen that she planned to place over a wall to hide graffiti.

“It will be one more building that will be graffitied and vandalized,” she said.

“It’s a shame, after so many years,” said Frank Martinez of Pacoima as he left the store with an acrylic bathroom vanity top.

Martinez said he has been shopping there since the store opened in 1946, the year he got out of the Army and moved to the San Fernando Valley. He stayed loyal even when a Home Depot opened nearer his home.

“Now we’ve got to go to that other place, which is a madhouse.”

In spite of reports that a super-sale would begin Monday as the chain prepared to cease operations in October, a steady stream of customers kept the checkers busy tallying everything from deck chairs and ratchet wrenches to plywood sheets and periwinkles, often stopping to chat with favored employees about the news.

“A Japanese firm going to buy it out?” one customer asked checker Florence Cousins, a 23-year veteran of the store.

“Nobody’s buying us out,” answered Cousins glumly.

Although the company’s head office ordered employees not to talk to reporters--allowing photographs but no interviews in the store--many talked anyway, mainly to reminisce about better times and express their bitterness over what they said was management’s offhandedness in notifying them that their employment is being terminated.

Many said that, aside from rumors that the chain would either sell out or close only its less successful stores, the first hint that their store would also close came from television news reports Tuesday night.

“The sad part about it is they kept everything such a secret from us,” Cousins said between customers. “We didn’t hear anything until yesterday.

“I noticed it said in the paper that people in the Irvine office were going to get severance pay. What happens to us?”

A company spokesman said there will be no severance pay for store employees, partly because they will be able to work eight to 10 weeks longer during the going-out-of-business sale, while employees of the division office will lose their jobs sooner.

Sewell, the store’s Teamsters union steward, said he was unable to get any information from his liaison at union headquarters in response to questions that employees were bringing to him.

“He called and said they’re closing all 97 stores. If he gets any other information, he’ll let me know,” Sewell said.

“That I already knew from watching the television.”

Several employees said they had expected that the recently rebuilt Van Nuys store would survive any cutback because it was the original store and it remained profitable.

“They should close the stores that were not going good and keep the ones that are making money,” Sewell said. “It’s ridiculous. Poor management.”

“I’m surprised,” said nursery specialist Tory Dowsett. “I thought it was a much more intelligent organization. Builders Emporium 601 (as it was designated by the company) was a symbol, the flagship of a fleet. A lot of our customers said, ‘Well, you’re not going to be closed.’ But we were.”

He feels bitter that no attempt was made to save some of the stores.

“I’ve been with the company 13 years,” he said. “The last 10 months, things have been really strange. It’s not the company I worked with. It’s cold and it’s hard.”

Amid the anger and mourning, most employees seemed confident about finding new work.

“I’m sure I’ll get a job,” Dowsett said. “I may not like it. I may be making $6 an hour and changing bedpans at Beverly Manor, but whatever it takes.”

His main concern, he said, was getting medical coverage, because he takes expensive medication.

The 56-year-old Sewell, who took his break on a bench in front of the store, greeting familiar customers by name, said he thinks his reputation will pull him through.

“Customers all over the Valley know me,” he said. “A lot of them don’t want to shop there unless I’m at work because they’ll get some answers.”

But he can’t be sure.

“The fact is there’s no one hiring now.”