Retailers Find Unusual Paths to Hardware

As an entrepreneur, how many hats can you wear? You may only have so much real estate up top, but it can seem like it takes a whole collection of headwear just to get through the day.

Accountant, human resources professional, psychologist, security guard; those are just a few of the many roles a retailer has to be familiar with to make a business successful. Many retailers grow up working in hardware stores and lumberyards, learning on the job from an early age and eventually taking on more tasks as they progress.

However, some retailers come from entirely different backgrounds and have unique perspectives that drive their business sense. Coming from a nonhardware career path might not automatically set a retailer up for success, but it does let these career-switchers see their businesses through a different lens that could be an asset for any business owner or manager.

For Malinda Milam of M Kay Supply in Benton, Missouri, hardware and farm supply was a calling she enjoyed after first serving her community as an occupational therapist. Helping people recover from injuries or learn to adjust their lives to fit their abilities had instilled a sense that her skills could strengthen the people around her, something she took with her into retail hardware when she and her husband opened their business.

Larry Myers took over River Ridge Hardware in Spokane, Washington, after a long career as a mortgage banker and loan officer. That career path meant Myers was already able to handle multiple roles in underwriting mortgages, handling financial document filing and even marketing his business. Already an avid DIYer and part-time home renovator, Myers knew his way around his community and its local hardware store. When the previous owner decided to retire, Myers was quick to switch into his new career as a retailer.

Take a look at these stories of retailers who built careers in other fields and then transitioned their lives into business ownership and retail home improvement stores. What pieces of their stories can help your business take the next step?

A History of Caring

Whether it was helping stroke victims return to their normal lives or assisting someone injured in a car accident get back to the job they love, Milam was focused on the recovery of her patients. As an occupational therapist with a bachelor’s of science degree in occupational therapy and a master’s degree in business, she oversaw the rehabilitation of a wide variety of patients coming into the hospital.

“We would see patients for any number of reasons. We worked with older patients who had a stroke and needed to relearn how to perform daily tasks and trauma patients who had a workplace accident that required them to readjust to their injuries,” Milam says. “No matter what the cause was, our focus was always on returning that patient to the life they lived before whatever brought them to the hospital. What are their drives, their passions? How can we make sure the parts of their lives they enjoy the most are still available to them?”

Her path to a career as a therapist wasn’t always clear. Milam’s parents were business owners, and that upbringing, coupled with frequent trips to camps affiliated with Future Business Leaders of America led Milam to the desire to own a business.

It was at a business camp that Milam first learned of occupational therapy. Milam researched the role and saw a connection with another one of her favorite activities.

“I was a candy striper all the way through my childhood, so I was already in the hospital environment taking care of patients, making them and their families comfortable and generally trying to take the anxiety away for someone during a stressful time,” Milam says. “It made so much sense. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before someone gave me that nudge.”

Milam’s dedication to her patients didn’t keep her from furthering her business skills. She was often in charge of more than just her patients’ care as the manager of her therapy staff, including managing schedules for the whole staff and designing education programs for students.

These roles would become crucial when Milam and her husband Jarrett Milam began to focus on a longtime dream for the couple: opening their own hardware store. Benton, Missouri, is primarily a rural community, so locals often had to make long trips to find supplies they needed for home repairs, professional contractor work or farm supplies. Even more than just a business to sell supplies, the couple’s dream was to have a center for the community that could bring more enjoyment for their neighbors.

“It wasn’t an overnight decision; we had wanted M Kay Supply in our lives and in our community for years. It was a focus for us even through our earlier careers,” Milam says.

What the Milams ended up bringing to Benton was a retail location doing far more than housing hardware and farm equipment. M Kay Supply has a full deli that also sells prepared food and caters events, a full outdoor and power equipment service shop, a grocery store and a sporting goods store that even sells kayaks.

The store draws in customers from up to a three-hour drive away, Milam says, because it operates as a one-stop-shop. While the customer base at the 14,000-square-foot location skews slightly more toward DIYers, the business also does a healthy amount of business with contractors working with the local government.

‘Devotion and Dedication’
With a background centered on providing support for people working on themselves, Milam sees clear connections between her previous work in occupational therapy and her current work at M Kay Supply. While she worked to rehab body and mind as a trained therapist, she now works to build a customer’s skills and knowledge to accomplish a goal.

“The entire idea of rehabilitation is that there is a goal you haven’t yet achieved. I fell in love with providing a service, to having devotion and dedication for patients,” Milam says. “That goal is now to renovate a house, repair a leak or even feed a family. We’re all about filling the needs of the community, and that doesn’t change just because you’re helping in different ways.”

Given her choice to start her career in health care, Milam sees her ability to create a family environment in a workplace scenario as a benefit for M Kay Supply. She fostered a close-knit team in the therapy division, which translates well to her current employees, she says. Team members assist customers and help them work toward a common goal.

Learning how to handle setbacks in a patient’s treatment also helped Milam manage challenging situations with customers. Problems with patients or their families can crop up, but approaching these issues with a team mentality, where the therapist and the patient are working toward a goal together in good faith, can be key.

A customer who knows an M Kay Supply employee is on their side and interested in making a project achievable can defuse tense situations.

“It’s all about adapting. You might lose an arm and have to relearn how to live without that limb,” Milam says. “We might not be dealing with such catastrophic alterations anymore, but working to help a customer adapt is a really great skill to have.”

Hometown Boy

River Ridge Hardware was never far from Larry Myers’ mind growing up in Spokane. Having graduated from the high school that sits 1 1/2 miles from the store’s current location, Myers had frequented the business for his own home projects during a decades-long career in finance.

Prior to purchasing River Ridge Hardware in 2017, Myers was a mortgage banker. Myers spent his time reviewing a homebuyer’s financial situation and history, connecting them with accountants and attorneys who could assist them in finalizing a deal, and then selling the buyer as a qualified investment to a bank official who eventually signed off on the loan.

“I was already handling a lot of different areas of the mortgage industry, which is what I really liked about my time in those years,” Myers says. “There were a lot of tasks I was shepherding customers through, and that translates well to how I approach River Ridge Hardware today.”

While mortgages were his primary business for the first few decades of his career, Myers also spent time flipping houses and maintaining rental properties he owned. These side projects made him very familiar with what River Ridge Hardware meant to the community.

“I was very close with the previous owner, and I was always in his store for items,” Myers says. “I approached him about the store four years before he finally sold it to me, but I always knew this could be a new career I would want to try.”

Changes in the mortgage lending industry after the 2008 collapse of the housing market made the connections between Myers and his customers harder to maintain, which is what drove him forward in the business originally. That change required devoting more time to the requirements of bureaucratic organizations and less time for Myers to form meaningful relationships with homebuyers and other financial professionals.

In a bid to make those personal connections a part of his work life again, Myers looked into River Ridge Hardware. He told the owner he was interested in purchasing the business should the owner ever be interested in getting out of the industry. After the sale was finalized, he quickly went about learning the business as he maintained momentum from the knowledgeable staff.

“One thing that caught me off guard was just how seasonal the hardware industry can be when it comes to sales,” Myers says. “Other retailers
I spoke to would take it as a matter of course, but you have to be so on top of your seasonal offerings to drive growth.”

In addition to serving hardware essentials out of a 10,000-square-foot salesfloor, River Ridge Hardware also has a strong rental business serving the operation’s mostly DIY customers. One unique feature of the business, which Myers believes might place it among just a handful of retailers in the U.S., is the company’s custom picture-framing business.

“I wanted to see a lot of growth out of the picture-framing business, and it has turned out well for us. We went to all of the area decorators and builders to let them know we can frame mirrors, pictures and even window screens,” Myers says. “It’s a niche service that you don’t expect to find in a hardware store like this, but once you see it, having access to quality framing fits right in with our other products.”

Always Something New
Given his long history as a customer working on his own projects, Myers came into his retail career with a consumer mindset. That attitude first showed itself at River Ridge Hardware when Myers looked over the inventory with longtime employees at the store.

“I wanted to learn as much as I could from other hardware stores and retailers. I started visiting every business I could, even some in Ireland when we went there on vacation,” Myers says. “Some things I would see, especially in some businesses that had been around for decades, was that some of the products on the shelf had been there for all that time as well. I wanted to completely end that, so we really dove into what we were doing with our inventory.”

Myers implemented a purposeful buying strategy with his managers and employees: Any new product brought into the store requires a reason, whether it’s fulfilling a customer’s request or filling a niche that isn’t yet handled in the product selection. It can also lead to a different marketing strategy for a product if Myers feels it should be moving at a faster clip.

Another pleasant revelation for Myers as he grew more familiar with life as a retailer was his ability to manage employees. As a new owner, he relied heavily on his inherited team, and developing a positive atmosphere was a priority given that his previous work in finance had meant he was largely taking care of customers on his own.

Having a team of individuals all working together was a new experience, he says, and something he didn’t know he’d enjoy as much as he does.

“Having the kind of quality employees we do obviously makes it even more special,” Myers says.

Having accomplished so many tasks in his previous career also set up Myers well for certain aspects of being a retailer. He had already conducted most of his marketing as a mortgage banker on his own, developing leads and business referrals. He devoted himself to doing similar work for River Ridge Hardware.

“I’m part of a referral group of several businesses in Spokane that all work together to promote each other. I took over the hardware store in our group, and I made sure the person who replaced me working in finance was included in our group,” Myers says. “It’s a great platform of businesses working to make each other successful. Whether it’s this kind of referral group or a community organization like Rotary International, it’s a vital part of our business.”