Throwback: Pay 'N Pak at the movies
The first issue of National Home Center News, the forerunner of HBSDealer, was born on Jan. 13, 1975. HBSDealer is celebrating its 50th anniversary with this special series of Throwback Thursday reports.
Long before Youtube began offering home improvement advice to DIYers, there was the Do it Yourself Training Theater at Pay ’N Pak
On the front page of the Feb. 10, 1975 edition, under the headline Pay ’N Pak DIY movies score hit with consumers, an article reports how the Kent, Washington-based home center chain benefits from its in-store “do-it-yourself training theaters.”
The in-store Technicolor Super-8 viewers featured films such as “How to install kitchen cabinets,” “How to hook up a toilet,” or “How to panel a room.” About two dozen similar titles were available for viewing.
Terry Fisher, the assistant manager of a Portland, Oregon, Pay 'N Pak store described the in-store education system this way: “We have customers come in and ask for them all the time. They’ll watch it once and think they understand it, then go home and forget something, so they’ll come back in the store again.
“When someone is looking at, say, kitchen cabinets and wondering if they can install them themselves, I’ll bring them over and turn on the machine and let them see how it’s done. They’ll say, ‘Gee, that looks easy,’ and they’ll buy it.”
The theaters were developed initially to train store employees.
From 1975 to 1991, Pay ’N Pak grew from 49 stores to 103. The company went out of business in 1992.
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Do you remember Pay 'N Pak? Let us know at news@hbsdealer.com.
