Isaac Smith felt more than the loss of business and the diminishment of revenues after a 2022 New Year’s Day fire burned his family’s 120,000-square-foot Matt’s Building Material store to the ground.

“I still miss the old store,” Smith said recently, sitting in the new office of a shiny new 45,000-square-foot building where the original building sat for decades in Pharr. “I grew up in that store. It’s like losing a loved one.”

Smith and his family have moved on best they can and have not only a new store in Pharr but another on the way in Harlingen. The new store is located right by the Pharr Interchange. Matt’s new look includes 33,000 square feet of adjoining office and retail space for lease and a 12,000-square-foot events center. It’s a campus of sorts and the new store is the main piece of the complex. 

Walking into the new store space feels like an updated version of the old one with Matt’s employees at the ready to help customers streaming in. Smith says the new Matt’s “is more shopper friendly,” with higher ceilings and a more open space concept. He had the store designed to put large counter areas manned by employees in the midst of retail space so customers feel free to stop and ask for help.

“We don’t want to compete with the (big) boxes on what they do well,” Smith said of the large corporate home improvement centers. “What we do well is service. It’s our #1 priority.”

Telling Stories

The new Matt’s opened in mid-April and it was quite the event in Pharr.

Smith estimated about 4,000 people visited the store that day to get a look at the store that rose from the ashes. The size of the Saturday, April 13 crowd at the reborn Matt’s is a testament to the iconic status the brand name has in the Rio Grande Valley. The Matt’s story got started in the 1960s in San Benito and opened a Pharr location in 1977. A store in Palmview in western Hidalgo County would follow in 2015.

Smith recounted a story from the April opening when an older woman came up to him and expressed happiness that Matt’s was back in business. She went on to say Matt’s years ago assisted in rebuilding her home after suffering a fire of her own. 

“She was in tears telling me the story,” Smith said. “It was a reminder that people tend to depend on you like you depend on them.”

For Smith, the reception and the size of the crowd for the store opening in mid-April goes back to what his father Danny – the patriarch of the business – preaches to his three sons at they have taken over daily operations of the Matt’s stores in the Valley. 

“My Dad says, ‘treat everyone the same and they’ll come back to you,'” Smith said.

Cameron County Expansion

Matt’s is still a business driven by lumber, siding, roofing and drywall sales, what Smith refers to as being commodity materials, the basic infrastructure of home and commercial construction.

It accounts for up to 70 percent of Matt’s revenues. The remaining 35 to 40 percent of the business’ sales come in the sales of doors, windows, flooring, hardware and plumbing. Unlike the big box stores where customers usually have to fend for themselves to find items, Matt’s has experienced staff in its counters and on the floor to offer insights and expertise.

For now, Matt’s is an Hidalgo County-heavy business with 70 percent of its revenues coming from its stores in Pharr and Palmview. Smith, however, sees Cameron County as “the Valley’s next big growth spot” with the industrialization of SpaceX at Boca Chica Beach and the Rio Grande LNG plant at the Port of Brownsville. Matt’s is moving to get ready for it by building a new store in Harlingen along Expressway 77, just north of Bass Pro Shop and Spur 54, where a collection of new retailing and restaurants has developed in that part of the city.

The Harlingen store will have a rail spur, a key Matt’s consideration in that it will serve as a receiving and shipping point for freight coming in to be sold at the company’s four stores in the Valley. The new Harlingen store is currently under construction. It will have 14,000-square-feet of retail space, with an adjoining warehousing of over 20,000 square feet to be available for storage and distribution.

Matt’s Building Materials is now fully back and revitalized even as Smith admits to bittersweet feelings in missing the old store, where he says, “I knew every place to go” in growing up in the old building.

“This is where we do life,” he said of himself and his brothers Jeremy and Ben and his parents, Danny and Diana. “Work is our life. We feel excitement with the new store opened, and a peace and joy that we’ve come back from the fire, but there’s still sadness with what we lost, that old store has a spot in our hearts.”