AJ Magnay is celebrating 40 years in business at the end of August. That is an impressive milestone in anyone's language.

Alan (or better known as AJ) started AJ Magnay's in the same building he is now (cnr Macaulay and Lake Street, North Lismore), in 1983. He has a reputation as the man that 'can make a buck out of anything'.

AJ Magnay has had a reputation for stocking everything that no one else had. When all else failed in your search for a building item or part, you were assured AJ would have it.

All that is about to change. AJ is reinventing AJ Magnay's and streamlining his business.

"Costs just keep going up, it happened again this month," AJ told the Lismore App, "Wages have gone up, supers (superannuation) gone up, electricity is going up, insurance bills and petrol. The overall running costs are through the roof."

"Everything's changed. Things that we used to sell every day just doesn't happen anymore or it becomes unviable to do a lot of stuff. Even if someone gives me stuff by the time you go pick it up and bring it back and process it, you've basically done your money and you haven't earned the money yet."

"So, we're just going to scale back and do things that are viable, otherwise, we just won't be here. That's basically where we're at."

"There's a lot of stuff that we won't do anymore. We'll get back to drums, buckets, shelving and storage systems, stainless steel benches, cabinetry and brass. We'll put in big brass displays on the front wall."

"We probably won't be doing general hardware anymore and there's loads of stuff to just get rid of," AJ added.

That leads us to AJ Magnay's 40-Day Warehouse Clearance to get rid of a huge amount of items to make room for the new look AJ Magnay's."

"It's a warehouse clearance, the biggest clearance in AJs history......no BS," AJ joked.

"We need to clear a lot of old stock so we can make the change."

If you're game, you can even haggle with AJ as he makes room for AJ Mgany 2.0.

"All of our knick-knack stuff will be sold cheap or we'll give it away. Some things will be 10%, some things will be up to 70-80% off and there will be free stuff. Come in and shop, everyone gets a free giveaway."

While the 40-Day Warehouse Clearout is on, AJ and his partner Ann will be renovating the buildings and getting new signs made.

"We'll be doing upgrades. I just went and saw Pegasus about the new sign or one of the new signs. We'll re-do the fences because they go knocked about by the flood and I want to try and get the buildings all painted and get this one (the lower main building) lifted and levelled."

The lower building had never been flooded before February 28, 2022, but AJ wants to fix it up before the August 30 40th birthday celebration.

You will find AJ Magnay on the corner of Macaulay and Lake Street, North Lismore with AJ and Ann's smiling faces Monday to Friday 9am to 4pm.