Photography by Kate Munsch
Ultramodern knobs sit beside rustic handles at Locks & Pulls Design Elements (9590 Manchester, 314-918-8883, locksandpullsdesignelements.com), a family-owned decorative-hardware showroom in Rock Hill. Interior designers, contractors, builders, and do-it-yourselfers all flock to the store to find the perfect hardware—cabinet pulls, interior and exterior fixtures, etc.—for their building and remodeling projects.
Locks & Pulls carries more than 200 brands, and there are products finished in chrome, antique brass, crystals… “There are a lot of lines that we have that you won’t see anywhere else, that you can’t even see online,” says manager Sarah Echele, whose family has been in the business for three generations.
Echele’s grandfather, Robert Theiss Sr., started Theiss Plating Corporation in 1950, and her father and mother, Tom and Dana Theiss, opened the Locks & Pulls showroom in 1996 to provide options for customers who wanted to change the style of their hardware entirely, rather than replate their existing items. Originally, there were two stores—Locks & Pulls in Des Peres and Design Elements in Clayton—but the two came together seven years ago at the current location in the Market at McKnight.
Changing out your kitchen cabinets’ hardware can be a relatively inexpensive way to update the look of the whole room. With a little research, Echele says, Locks & Pulls can even accommodate cabinets and other furniture pieces with oddly sized or placed holes, which are often difficult to match. The store keeps more than 200 products in stock, and special orders may arrive in just a few days.
The store’s pricing isn’t as expensive as one might imagine for a specialty store. The products at Locks & Pulls go from items like simple satin-finish nickel cabinet knobs on the low end to solid bronze doorknobs on the high end.
“I’ve had people who spend $75 to $80 for their entire kitchen, and then you also have ones that spend thousands of dollars,” says Echele. “You really never know when they come in the door what they are going to be looking for or what style they might like.
“Everybody has a price range, and we try to work with them,” she adds. And try this on for size: Customers can borrow product samples right off of the walls to take home for a few days.
“People don’t do this every day, so envisioning things like this is sometimes very hard,” Echele says. “It helps to see it at home in their lighting with their backsplash or countertop or faucet.”
