I can take you to a half dozen of those kind of stores, all within 5 miles of a Wal-mart. Wal-mart isn't the killer of local hardware stores. If they died, its more likely to be the result of Lowe's, Home Depot, and other big box lumber/hardware stores. The ones I'm familiar with that survived stock difficult to find items and specialize in the needs of their neighborhoods/areas. Most of those that failed failed not because of Wal-mart or the big box hardware/lumber retailers, but for many other reasons, mostly self-inflicted.