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Riding the Storm Out

Brinker Brown saves its flagship store by selling beyond it.

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Jeff Brown (R), owner of Brinker Brown Fastener & Supply, and Tom Barklow, president of sales and operations, helped their flagship store weather the recession by adapting their personalized service and deep expertise to selling on the Internet. For Brinker Brown, the storm is beginning to pass, but the Internet is here to stay.

Tom Hammel, Contractor Supply Magazine

Every few years, too often at any rate, a hurricane blows across Florida leaving lives shattered, communities exploded and the landscape somehow changed and unchanged at the same time. After each storm, some people call it quits and leave, but many more stay and rebuild. There is an element of playing the odds to home ownership here, and after a natural disaster, many outsiders feel like the game has reset itself and that it is now “safe” to move in.

“After Hurricanes Andrew and Charlie, a lot of people thought, ‘Hey, Florida had a hurricane, nobody’s going to want to live there,’” observes Tom Barklow, president of sales and operations for Brinker Brown Fastener & Supply, Ft. Myers and Naples, Fla. “But it actually boosted everything. People were coming in, buying up supplies. Contractors, especially roofers, were busy as could be. Shingles and tile were in short supply. Our generator business was way up; fasteners were selling out. We don’t want to see another one, but Charlie generated a lot of business for a lot of people.”

Ultimately, Hurricane Charlie just added fuel to the region’s economic and population engines. By late 2004, encouraged by the region’s seemingly limitless construction market and tired of the limitations posed by a facility they had outgrown, Brinker Brown began drawing up plans for a new facility.

They had their own ideas of the “perfect” store but wisely enlisted the aid of local and national consultants to create a facility that would work as well in operation as it would look on paper. They used a local architect, Jason Tramonte, for the building design, and turned to STAFDA showroom and warehouse consultant, Bob Footlik, for help designing the “moving parts” of the new facility.

“After Hurricanes Andrew and Charlie, a lot of people thought, ‘Hey, Florida had a hurricane, nobody’s going to want to live there.’ But it actually boosted everything."  — Tom Barklow, president of sales and operations, Brinker Brown.

“Bob Footlik came down in early 2006, asked us what we were looking for, and then told us to leave the room,” Barklow explains with a chuckle. “He sat in there with a piece of paper and in a little while had a concept for us. We discussed a few changes to it; he threw us out of the room again and within a day or so he had the initial concept down pretty well. Bob’s expertise probably saved us six months of design revisions. He designed the warehouse racking systems, the loading docks, lighting, tool repair area, showroom and offices. We also used an interior designer, Rob Berlin, for other aspects.”

By mid 2006, Jeff Brown, Brinker Brown’s owner, could see another storm coming, an economic one, but he had no way of knowing how bad it could be. What he did know was that if Brinker Brown stayed in the 10,000-square-foot facility that it had outgrown, nothing would ever get better.

“We had a decision to make; ‘Do we go ahead with a new building even though the market is slowing down or not?’” Brown recalls asking. “Then, in February 2007, almost right at the beginning of the downturn, the county decides to triple the impact fees for new construction,” Brown notes with amazement. “So this building was going to cost us in the neighborhood of an extra $250,000 to build if we waited. We had the property, we had the plans and it was ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ time. So we said, ‘Let’s do it — we’ve never gotten anywhere standing still.’”

Construction began in February 2007. Move-in was accomplished in November. “We opened the new doors for business on December 3, 2007,” Barklow recalls.

A working showroom
The store is a textbook example  of retail design. The showroom occupies roughly 3,500 of the building’s overall 30,000 square feet of space. An entrance in one corner of the building funnels foot traffic through a high-walled channel of product, to a right hand turn bordered by the repair counter on the left and the sales counter dead ahead. From there the traffic turns and flows clockwise, past a Makita Pro Center, to open into the store. The effect is like following a coiled spring from the outside in, then back out again the way you came.

It’s a neat trick that serves more than one purpose. Topped by prominent “Construction Zone” signage, the entryway lends the feeling of entering a real, albeit tidy, job site.  Four poured concrete columns anchor the entry “funnel” and also serve as working examples of anchoring systems in use.

“The concept was to make this a working showroom,” Barklow explains. “When you walk in you see raw concrete, glue-laminated wood beams, bar joists and anchors put in place. If a customer has a question about an anchor, we can say,  ‘Here is one in actual application.’ If they need a self-drilling tek screw, well, ‘Here’s one
going through this half-inch beam.’”

The funnel aspect of the entrance also lends a feeling of security, which is also by design.

“Security has everything to do with this design,” Brown states. “When we designed the showroom we wanted to use the elements of construction, the polished concrete floors, steel bar joists, glue laminated wood beams and chain link fencing, but it also serves a very functional purpose — it helps deter shrinkage. We don’t have smash and grabs anymore.”

Brand logic
The showroom also shows Brinker Brown’s merchandising strategy.

“I read your article on Mann Tool and how they display tools by brand,” Brown says. “We are kind of a hybrid of that. We merchandise our cordless tools by brand like Mann does, but we display all of our corded tools by type — all the drills together, grinders together and so on. Our reasoning is that with cordless tools, you are really looking at a system that is tied together by a common battery platform. So, it makes sense to display cordless tools by brand, but we prefer to have all the corded products like drills, hammer drills, saws and so forth displayed together by tool type, where you can touch, feel and compare them side-by-side.”

Each of Brinker Brown’s top lines are prominently displayed. A line of Generac products helps channel customers into the store. Louisville ladders form a kind of honor guard for entering customers on the other side.

“Generac, a Sphere1 line, has become an extremely important partner for us,” Brown says. “We have done very well with them, both in portable and home standby generators and pressure washers. We are a Sphere1 charter member and we were honored to be their Distributor Member of the year in 2010. We are proud
of that.”

Makita Pros
The showroom also features a Makita Pro Center.  Brown himself has been selling Makita since the 1970s. After the company built its new facility, Makita proposed adding the Pro Center. It turned out to be literally the perfect fit.

“We had to fit in their displays into the showroom,” Brown says. “We had to move Diamond Products over to the inside entry wall, right between two poured concrete columns. Whether it was luck or skill, everything fit so exactly that we just unbolted the beams, jacked them up, fit the racking between them and let them back down.”

The Makita Pro Center is followed by prominent displays of DeWalt and Milwaukee cordless tools, and then a wall of mixed-brand corded tools. The center of the showroom is anchored by a large display of JET and Powermatic benchtop and stationary equipment.

“I knew in 2006 that a downturn was coming. I just never knew how major it was going to be — how deep, how long and how broad.” — Jeff Brown, owner, Brinker Brown Fastener & Supply

Saved by the Web
But even a world-class showroom can’t stave off a nation-rattling recession indefinitely. Although customers and employees alike loved the new facility, Florida’s imploding construction market quickly forced Brown from plans to build his dream facility to strategies to save it.

“Again, I knew in 2006 that a downturn was coming,” Brown reiterates. “I just never knew how major it was going to be — how deep, how long and how broad. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it was going to be as severe as it has been. Unfortunately, we had to downsize our staff from 36 to 16, but we are now starting to hire additional staff. As the market here continued to deteriorate — severely — I knew that for our very survival we had to get outside of our market somehow. Even though we were fairly well diversified with some of the things we do here like with Muro in the roofing and marine decking market, for the salvation of this company we needed to get outside of this market because it wasn’t going to come back for a long time.”

The answer lay in a project Brown had put away for a rainy day.

“I bought the domain name www.wholesalepowertools.com 10 or maybe 12 years ago, knowing that one day the Internet was probably going to be the place to do commerce,” Brown says. “When you’re busy you never have the time to do something like that, but when the market began to slow down, I said ‘Let’s pull out that domain name and develop a site.’ At the time there was a fair amount of competition online and the margins were low in my opinion. But we thought that with our lines, we could compete.”

The company’s first Web site was developed locally.  Brown says, “It was pretty, but it was a disaster. It didn’t function very well.”    

Brinker Brown at a Glance

Founded: 1985 Ownership: Privately held Branches: Ft. Myers (30,000 square feet) and Naples (10,000 square feet), Fla. Employees: 16 Markets: Commercial/residential construction, mechanical, electrical, roofing and marine construction Services: In-house tool repair Line Card: 3M,  Bostik, Champion, DeWalt, Diamond Products, Driltec, Empire Level, ERB, Erico/Caddy, Falltech, Fein, Filmtech, Freud, Generac, Hitachi Pneumatics, Honda, International Fasteners, Irwin, Lackmond, Lenox, Louisville Ladders, Makita, Metabo, Metacaulk, Milwaukee, Muro, PHD Manufacturing, Porteous, Powers, PrimeSource, Reed, Simpson, Stabila, Star Stainless, Tru-Cut, Walter Meier Affiliations: STAFDA, Sphere1, Florida Marine Contractors Assn. Web sites: www.brinkerbrown.com, www.wholesalepowertools.com

For their second site, Brown enlisted the help of Holly Benson, the company’s vice president of operations. “Holly rolled up her sleeves and got involved in it with me,” Brown says. “We hired an in-house programmer who built a very good site for our second attempt.”

The third incarnation of the company’s site is live today and Brown is very pleased with it. Among its most popular features are live chat and a nifty “fuel gauge” that tracks customers’ progress toward free shipping as they build their orders.   

“Selling online is not at all what I thought it was going to be. Between the chats and the amount of telephone calls you get, it is far more hands-on than I ever dreamed it would be,” Brown observes. “I originally thought it would all be just point, click and collect the money, but if you want to build an online business you have to put in the time and do the follow-up. In fact, I spend maybe 70 percent of my time working on the Web site.”

Another similarity is that selling tools and fasteners online often involves as much consultative selling as face-to-face sales.

“A lot of our Internet sales involve consultative selling, and that has proven to be very successful for us because we are dedicated to giving the same level of customer service to customers who click or call in that we do when they walk up to our counter,” Brown emphasizes.  

“Just because it’s the Internet that doesn’t mean you can’t get professional expertise and have a great customer experience. It is very important to me to be able to let those customers know that when we are online with them that we are the real deal — we deal with contractors every day and we know what we are talking about. We aren’t just operating out of a rental unit — we are completely invested in what we do.”

This is where the new Web site’s chat function proves its value.

“Actually, the chats and phone calls often come to me first,” Brown says. “We take turns covering the site, so customers can always talk to an expert when they chat with us or call in. We posted Holly’s actual photo on the site and customers are amazed when they learn they are really talking and chatting with her in person.”

Real world benefits
And although Brinker Brown’s “brick and mortar” contractor customers may not know the store has a strong online presence, they benefit from it anyway — in better pricing and selection.

“The online business has allowed us to maintain our purchasing volume with our vendors,” Brown says. “And it has also allowed us to keep a broader range of product on the shelves, so when someone walks in looking for a “D” item that we probably would not stock if we only had this physical store, now we can stock it because we also have an opportunity to sell it on the Internet.”

The hardest lesson Brown has learned about selling online is that if it was easy, everyone would do it.  

“It takes a tremendous amount of tenacity, dedication, resources and manpower to be successful selling online,” Brown concludes. “If you’re going to dabble in it, you’re not going to be successful — you’ve got to be in it with both feet.”

Light through the clouds
So, are Florida’s economic skies, both real and virtual, clearing? Well, the housing market is beginning to recover. A May 2012 report by the National Association of Realtors indicated that Florida is home to seven of the current top 10 fastest recovering housing markets, with Brinker Brown’s home town of Ft. Myers coming in at number seven. Naples, where their second store is located, is number five.

Brown observes that from a peak of nearly 2,600 housing starts per month in the mid 2000s, Lee and Collier County had 408 housing starts in Q1 2012, and those numbers are much improved over a year ago.

The sunshine state has a long way to go before the skies are truly clear again, but there are rays of light here and there. Brinker Brown continues to build its vendor relationships, and has just added the Honda line of power products. Although this latest storm has again reshaped the landscape, Brinker Brown is still here — leaner, stronger and open for business. CS