A Local Success Story Founded on Friendship
Closets organize our lives. They store necessities like clothes and shoes, and preserve keepsakes like photos and heirlooms. At Carolina Closets Plus, we get that a closet is much more than a small, enclosed space.
President Mike Hoffer and late business partner Craig Yarnell built Carolina Closets Plus on life’s greatest necessity: friendship.
They met in fall 1970 in Chapel Hill after joining Boy Scouts, and accumulated lifelong memories while earning their Eagle Scout rank together. They also started a high school roofing and painting business, and continued to nurture their home improvement skills during those years.
Along the way they married and started families. Mike graduated from UNC-CH in 1981 with a business degree. Craig attended Technical College of Alamance and obtained his commercial contractor’s license in heating and air conditioning. In 1985, Yarnell-Hoffer Hardware opened for business. Fifteen years later, Mike and Craig evolved their business to fulfill homebuilders’ needs for custom closet and organization services.
Today, Carolina Closets Plus is the perfect niche company. We no longer sell retail hardware or rent equipment because we now have the largest custom closet, home office and garage organization company in the area—and the largest showroom in North Carolina.
Mike and Craig’s friendship and business relationship endured for 38 years. Sadly, on Jan. 6, 2008, Craig passed away suddenly due to complications from pneumonia.
In Memoriam
Memories of Craig rank among Mike’s most treasured possessions: humorous home plumbing calamities, a mammoth truckload of store fixtures they unloaded by themselves, and a broken down car on a perilous Chicago street. Mike keeps these memories close to his heart, and Craig’s work lives on through Mike’s continued commitment to Carolina Closets Plus’ valued customers..
Craig and Mike published a newsletter from 1989 to 1997
