Economy Hardware rebrands website

Economy Hardware, which has helped local college students furnish and fix up dorm rooms and off-campus apartments for nearly 60 years, rebranded its retail website.

Henceforth, the website will be known as Citylivingstores.com, in part because it attracted customers from far beyond Greater Boston, the Cambridge company said.

Local college-age cognoscenti, and a large segment of the post-graduate demographic as well, are familiar with Economy Hardware, but a rebranding should help educate outlanders, the company believes; its research showed that the Citylivingstores.com name would be more meaningful to new Web customers who dwell miles away from Area Code 617.

"The Citylivingstores.com brand will make it easier for our far-flung customers to understand our product mix," Economy Hardware owner Larry Friedman said in a statement. "Our local customers know that we are much more than just hardware, but the online world is very fast, and we may have only a few seconds to capture a Web customer's attention."

Economy Hardware has stores in such locations as Allston, Brookline, and Cambridge.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)