"When everyone else, including the home centers, runs out of shovels and salt, we stay open," said Cohen, who has one employee but is assisted by his wife, as well as his parents, who work Mondays.
This year? Well, Cohen & Co. has a lot of snow shovels and salt in stock, some upstairs if a flurry or two brings in a buyer, but most of it within easy reach in the basement in the event of a blizzard.
It isn't just salt and shovels. There is a whole industry built around winter, even in this relatively temperate area marked by feast - 1995-96, 2009-2010, 2010-11 - or famine - 1989-90, 2001-02, and so far this year.
"We haven't sold as much weather stripping for doors and windows as we usually do," he said. "People aren't buying space heaters because it hasn't been that cold. We haven't been selling many furnace filters because heaters aren't being run as much."
You might think homeowners freed from the burdens of shoveling and deicing would be shopping instead for paint and rollers, rakes to clean their yards, or similar products to improve or just repair, and that might ease the financial pain of a non-wintry winter. But Cohen said it didn't work that way.
"They're spending more time in the gym, or taking long walks on warm days," he said. "They're definitely not working around the house."
Wintry forecasts serve as the magnet Cohen needs to get customers to his store, where they typically find other things to spend money on.
If you buy a 50-pound bag of ice melt, you aren't going to drag it around the sidewalk as you spread it. So you buy a plastic bucket, and maybe a pair of work gloves so the stuff won't touch your bare hands.
Homeowners rummage around the salt containers and see that Cohen stocks plastic containers of an ice melter that protects pets' paws, so they add that to their purchases.
