Former Top Guns Honorees Share Thoughts on Growth

While the independent channel has seen some major changes, what hasn’t changed is retailers sharing good advice. Digging into the archives back to 2007, the first year for the Top Guns awards, we pulled some sage wisdom from past honorees on ways to grow your operation.

“We decided that surviving is like kissing your sister, nice but no thrill. We are not in this business to survive. When you are a single store, if you are not growing, you are dying. Our greatest business triumph is how we have remade ourselves from the inside out into a high-performance culture that remained true to its core value. Competing is a function of the business model, which gets back to ‘one store as good as it can be.’ But it is also a mentality. Operationally, we should be able to run this store under one roof much more effectively than a big box can run thousands of stores.”
—Greg Fuller, All American Home Center Downey, 2007 Honoree

“When you reach a certain size in this business you are actually able to do a lot more things. Not to mention your customers think you are bigger than you are, so they just see you as more able to compete.”
—Jim Smith, Home Hardware Centers, 2009 Honoree

“The point is opportunities might be right under your nose. Just open your eyes, examine what has worked and what hasn’t worked and learn from your mistakes.”
—Cally Coleman Fromme, Zarsky Lumber, 2011 Honoree

“We have always taken the perspective in business that you have to embrace change. I think our willingness to embrace change and new things is what sets us apart from a lot of our competitors. As a business, we have gone through a metamorphosis more than once, and we are not afraid to invest in areas that might not be traditional and that might not even turn out to be successful.”
—Scott Parker, Parker Lumber, 2012 Honoree

“Our willingness to change and evolve over the years as the market and competition dictated has been our key to success. Adding new inventory or services, remodeling an old store, closing an old store and opening a new one in a better location or stretching personnel and resources to open an additional store have all been practices we have used to grow over the years.”
—Joe Taylor, Taylor’s Do it Centers, 2014 Honoree

“I’d say don’t give up. Too often I’ve seen small retailers just give up—sell the real estate and call it quits. A lot of people regret that; it’s better to merge with somebody else than to quit, and we’re stronger together than we are apart. In my experience, we have more to leverage together, while allowing each location to keep its local identity, and its people doing what they’re good at.”
—Eli Bliffert, Bliffert Lumber & Hardware, 2016 Honoree

“To grow new stores, your comp-store (sales) have to be growing. We have had comp-store growth throughout the years, which has been the engine that fuels our overall growth.”
—Tim Fansler, Family Farm & Home, 2016 Honoree

“Quite honestly, I would tell you to look bigger. Going from one to two stores is nice, but I would challenge anyone looking to grow to set goals based on a specific dollar volume and unit number of stores. One of the biggest risks in retail is to have all of your eggs in one basket. You need to diversify your investment—and having multiple stores can help you mitigate your risk. In my opinion, running multiple stores is actually easier than running a single store. I have my teams in place, which for the most part can run the day-today operations, so that I can focus on the strategic business plan.”
—Jeremy Melnick, Gordon’s Ace Hardware, 2016 Honoree

“By focusing on top-line growth, we were able to start extending our brand and business model to adjoining communities. This also created operating efficiencies that would help to increase profitability for the business. There are plenty of great hardware people in the business today. Quite a few are ready to retire and hit cruise control instead of investing time or money in growth. Unfortunately, their stores become stagnant and their business starts to decline. Finding these opportunities to work with experienced owners is paramount to our growth in the future.”
—Scott Jerousek, Farm & Home Hardware, 2017 Honoree

“I would like to see us take a much more progressive stance as an organization. Far too many of our current processes are results of our business’ evolution. Rather than us taking into account current variables, we are still playing outdated strategies in many of our high-impact areas. I’m not saying we are not eager to increase in number of locations, but I do believe there’s far more to it than a financial decision. I’m a believer that a sustainable, succeeding business must carry a healthy anatomy. Identifying operating inefficiencies is just as critical as an uptick in sales.”
—Jonathan Miller, Miller Hardware, 2017 Honoree

“One of the key components to our future success is marketing ourselves as the one-stop shop for our customers. Continuing to retain staff with experience and offering exceptional customer service gives us an edge over our big-box and online competitors.”
—Amanda Fancy, Gow’s Home Hardware, 2018 Honoree

“Something I like to say is, ‘Whatever’s new, that’s what we do.’ There is a need to continuously reinvest in your business to remain relevant.”
—Christine Hand, Handyman Home Hardware, 2019 Honoree

“The old adage of location, location, location is never more true than today. Our growth strategy is focused more on acquisition than ground ups. We’re looking for stores that are proven winners where we can see how we can tweak it and improve it. We’re looking to buy successful stores and then to find ways to make them even better. We look at the culture, operations, merchandising, marketing and how we compare overall. We also think about how the operation may be underperforming and where we need to laser-focus to bring about meaningful change. We do extensive listen and learn campaigns, and we partner with the store teams to ensure we’re focused in the right places and that we have alignment with them. The final outcome of this process is a store that has great staffing and a great culture, which is paramount to our business. Our philosophy is that if we are a great place to work, then we’ll be a great place to shop, and we leverage our scale and experience to bring about shifts that drive value.”
—Mark Schulein, Crown Ace Hardware, 2019

“Change continues to exponentially get faster. I believe there are a ton of opportunities for independents to carve out their niches and serve customers, but your team must constantly be looking for the next thing. Independents are nimble enough to change faster than some of the larger national retailers for their specific markets and customers.”
—Patrick Goebel, Star Lumber, 2020 Honoree

“I don’t have a goal of a certain number of stores by a certain time, but we evaluate our markets every three months. I think we have the pillars that we need to go forever. Individual paint stores, both commercial and industrial; wood coatings; home fashions, including wallcoverings and window treatments; and more JC Licht Ace stores. These are the things we know and do well. The most important thing about growing is having no doubt that I’m making the right decision when I open a store. I want to be sure it makes sense. We go where the contractors tell us to go. We have to have that support in a market before we go.”
—Elliott Greenberg, JC Licht, 2022 Honoree

“As we grow, we rely on Builders’ loyal customer base and grow into new markets based on their requests and suggestions. From Day 1, we’ve been focused on providing top-tier customer service, and it’s because we talk to our customers to find out what their challenges are and what they want to see from us. We’re honest and we can walk them through a project, whether they’re a professional or a DIYer. We’ve also spent decades forging strong relationships with our vendors, which has helped us earn the reputation of being able to source just about anything our customers need.”
—Stacy Bivona, Builders, 2022 Honoree

“Company culture and a desire for continuous improvement have set the foundation for our success, but technology has helped achieve many of the goals we’ve set forth. Our vision when it comes to technology is to make significant investments every year from a capital expenditure standpoint to stay relevant. We invest where it makes sense, where we’ll see a return and where it supports the needs of the business and the objectives of the strategic plan.”
—TJ Colson, Wilco, 2023 Honoree