Tales from the Road: An entrepreneurial spirit

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We met Kevin Richardt at an event in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. He is a Cornwell Quality Tools dealer out of Milwaukee, Wis., and he was telling us about how he got into the business and used his entrepreneurial spirit to grow his territory.

"My background is quite diverse," says Richardt. "My parents owned a marine repair business when I was growing up, so I was used to working around boats and working on things from an early age. I was always a mechanical kid."

Richardt says he remembers his dad buying tools from a Snap-on guy, which sparked his interest.

"I always thought it was fascinating that he ran this business out of his house. I was intrigued by the [mobile tool] model because I've had this entrepreneurial spirit since I was young. And so, later on, I was working for dealerships and buying tools -- just like the young guys buy from me now -- and I got introduced to the Cornwell dealer."

Richardt says meeting the Cornwell Tools dealer started him thinking about being a tool dealer.

"Gordy Gill, who was a dealer for eons, I talked to him about becoming a dealer. It wasn't realistic at the time, but I was curious. Cornwell gave me all the information, which was always in the back of my mind."

After a career change to building maintenance, Richardt spent years working in this field and far from the mobile tool business. He planned to start a home inspection company.

"I spent three years preparing to launch a home inspection company. The thing that always struck me was that the home inspector doesn't make a big cut of the real estate transaction but has a heavy liability."

After getting sidetracked for a few years working for an old employer, Richardt still had plans to launch his inspection business. But he got cold feet and began to doubt his business plan.

Starting his franchise

In 2020, Richard applied for a Cornwell Tools franchise and discovered that Milwaukee and Northern Illinois markets were available.

"The irony was, where I was working at FedEx, my main office was dead center in the middle of this territory. I figured I'm already driving up here daily and am familiar with the area; this might be a good opportunity. Everything kind of fell into place from there."

Most of his territory had been covered by the previous Cornwell dealer, so there was business on the table already, according to Richardt.

"I chased the previous dealer down and got to know him a little bit, felt pretty confident that he was a good dealer. He wasn't out there doing shady things. I didn't want to have to do damage control. And so I thought I would roll the dice and give it a try."

Richardt rolled into his new business in August 2020.

"It was pretty successful right out of the gate," he recalls. "The performance of my business from day one has exceeded what I thought was realistic."

While Richardt had to handle warranties and so forth at first, customer interest was always there.

"Cornwell says the goal is to get to 150 customers as fast as possible. I went from zero to 150 customers in about six weeks. My district manager commented on how I was the fastest to 150 that he had at that point. It felt natural like it just happened."

Meeting the customers' needs 

Richardt says he only really understood what listening to the customer meant once he started paying attention.

"It's just being alert and aware of what customers say, how they're acting, what they're looking at, and keeping those mental notes. It's funny how often I'll listen to their conversations or something they saw on TikTok and then bring something similar to their attention. They eat it up."

Richardt notes that his selling style is slightly different than others, but it works for him.

"I start the day later than most, and I run full throttle until I'm done. I've realized that I can't promote to every guy in every shop. I have more of a blitz-style approach. I fly through as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, and show the ones I think will be receptive to certain products. Often I sell stuff by not even showing them anything. I sell a certain line of heated gear; I wear it and talk about it, and people are interested, or it plants a seed. So, when it's 10 degrees outside three weeks from now, suddenly, they're like, 'Hey, I need one.'"