Getting started can be a trying task for budding mobile tool distributors. The challenges that come along with embracing the entrepreneurial spirit and trying to break into the competitive business of selling tools can be overwhelming for the inexperienced and uninitiated.
It helps to have a mentor to impart wisdom and share perspective on what it's like to make a living as a distributor. Mankato, Minn.-based independent tool salesman Bob Taylor managed to luck his way into a good one: his father.
“Being a distributor intrigued me,” says Taylor, who helped his father, Earl, sell tools for several years before buying the business, Tool Sales Company, from him in 2003. “My dad did well with the business, so I figured I should be able to as well.”
Bob is the third owner of the company, which got its start in 1965. His father purchased the business in 1980, when Bob was nearly 18 years of age. The younger Taylor immediately began helping his father set up the truck, run errands, pick up tools and make deliveries. These tasks allowed Bob to gain valuable experience that would come in handy when he took over the business more than two decades later.
Eventually, Bob found himself looking for a different full-time job and mentioned something to Earl. That gave the elder Taylor an idea.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you wait a few more years, because I’m going to retire,’” says Bob. “That’s kind of how it happened.”
More than a decade has passed since Earl retired and Bob commenced with running Tool Sales Company. Though the business was passed on from father to son, the duo still works together on a regular basis.
“He still helps me out by making telephone calls and trying to find tools for me,” explains Bob. “It’s usually just in the summer months, though, because he goes south for the winter.”
As for what the immediate future holds for Bob, Earl and the business, there are no plans to add a truck, change the route or make any other modifications. Retirement is about 10 or so years away, Bob figures, so he’s already thinking about a potential succession plan. It happens to be a tried and true one that has worked once before for Tool Sales Company.
“It’s just a matter if my boy wants to get into it or not,” says Bob, referring to his 22-year-old son.
“Time will tell, I guess,” he adds.
