Highland Hardware started out as a small, ordinary hardware store in downtown Atlanta in 1978. It was founded by a young couple who met at Georgia Tech, and after graduating and getting married, went to work together for an old Atlanta company known as King Hardware (which incidentally had the distinction in 1886 of selling to the druggist next door the washtub used to mix the first batch of Coca-Cola). After a four year bootstrap education in the tool and hardware business at King, the couple took out an SBA loan, rented a storefront near their home and cast their bread upon entrepreneurial waters.
