Cornwell Quality Tool distributors are ‘Driving Forward’ in 2025

“Driving Forward” — the theme for this year’s Cornwell Quality Tools Tool Rally was seen in many ways. One of which was purely in numbers. This year’s event hosted around 620 distributors, and of those distributors, about 120 were new to the industry. With a total of 795 distributors overall, Cornwell was pleased with the percentage of those in attendance.

Another notable statistic for this year was the number of Top 100 distributors who sold over $1 million

“This is the first time ever that every one of our Top 100 dealers are over a million dollars revenue or sales throughout the year,” said Andy Scott, national director of sales for Cornwell.

Along with this growth comes a growth of the show floor as well. Don Russell, Cornwell’s director of marketing, remembers how, three years ago, the show was held in the same location — The Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel in Orlando, Florida — but they’ve grown so much in vendor count, they had to put the display tool trucks outside.

“Our vendor count is up,” Russell noted. “I think we’re in the 110 range, and I’m counting the Ironman Plus [booth] as one. They’ve got six or seven vendors in there.”

Never stop learning

The theme of “Driving Forward” continued into the four training courses offered at the show.

Driving Sales showcased six vendors who were given six minutes to pitch their products to the distributors. 

“We want them to pitch it to the dealers in the way the dealers should pitch it to the end user,” Russell explained. “When you're focused on that six minutes, you have to really focus on the details.”

Driving Tech Credit went over Cornwell’s new in-house financing program, teaching distributors how it works and fielding any questions they had about the platform.

Driving Business was all about making sure that your business metrics are moving the right way, noted Scott. 

Driving Ironman Plus covered Cornwell’s relationship with ISN. ISN takes care of many of Cornwell’s special order, low-volume items.

“The program has been an amazing success for us,” Russell said. “And this was dealers wanting to know, ‘How can I navigate the website?’ ‘How can I find things easier?’ So it was really the operational side of how to use Ironman Plus.”

Fresh products to stock

As usual, the new products seen at this year’s rally reflect requests that come directly from the distributors.  Many of the products introduced at the Kick-Off Meeting were the most popular at the show.

Russell noted that the one he was hearing most about were the new toolbox colors — Radium (red), Carbide (gray), and Cobalt (blue). This enthusiasm was followed by excitement for the new 79” double-bank toolbox. This toolbox has the largest power drawer of any other Cornwell box, and the drawer is higher than on most boxes, so technicians won’t have to bend as much to get to the tools they need.  

Along with the power drawer, Cornwell also released a power drawer organizer they developed with Mantis. The organizer is fully adjustable and works in any drawer.

The locking flex head ratchets, along with the 3-piece digital torque wrench set packed in foam, were also big hits.

“It's nice to see that everything that we pushed at the Kick-Off Meeting,” Russell said, “I've heard back from dealers being very excited.”

Areas of growth

The flagship continues to listen to the needs and wants of their distributors when it comes to making the Tool Rally the best it can be. One update to this year’s show was the inclusion of a warm breakfast each day.

“We ask [the distributors], ‘How can we get better throughout the year?’ The warm breakfast — get them full of energy … Just like they take care of their customers, we take care of ours,” Scott said. “They’re the most important thing we have. We want to make sure that when they trade their time to come here, they get the most out of it.”

Additionally, they also added more insurance and financing vendors to the show floor to offer the distributors vendors who can provide them a service to help run their businesses more efficiently.

Lastly, Cornwell has continued to expand manufacturing products in the USA with the hardline products produced through Mogadore and the tool storage line out of Van Wert. With the push for American-made products, Cornwell figures there’s no better way to do that than through their own facilities.

To view more photos from the event, visit the Cornwell Quality Tools Tool Rally 2025 photo gallery.