Upon its founding 40 years ago, any items sold by the St. Paul, Minnesota-based Esch Construction Supply Inc. had to fit into the trunk of a Mercury Grand Marquis, be consumable, be considered high-ticket, and generally not require a mechanic.

The perfect products that fit those criteria were diamond saw blades.

“They came in all shapes and sizes and required expertise,” says Dan Esch, president and CEO. “If you want to cut brick, block, concrete, asphalt, or steel, there’s a different blade for each material and a different blade for every type of equipment.”

Diamond blades and bits are their bread and butter. As a distributor, they offer vacuum and dust suppression systems and other concrete-related tools, including walk-behind saws, hand saws, core drills, and floor grinders. Still, ultimately, it all comes down to the bits and blades.

“We have a very focused and narrow niche,” Dan says. “We are the #1 source for diamond tools, cutting equipment, and expertise so contractors can cut with total confidence.”

Despite offering hundreds of such specialty items, every employee is an expert to some degree.

“If you’re an outside sales rep, sales support rep, or a service technician, that level of expertise is very high,” he says. “If you’re in finance or delivery, we still expect you to be able to answer questions and field inquiries.”

Like the products sold, Esch Construction Supply sells to a specific sector of contractors, such as commercial concrete and masonry contractors and infrastructure contractors working on roads, bridges, and utilities.

“New construction or restoration requires cutting, drilling, or polishing of concrete,” Dan says. “We sell and service anything that’ll cut, grind, drill, or polish concrete.”

"We sell and service anything that’ll cut, grind, drill, or polish concrete." Dan Esch, president, Esch Construction Supply

DRIVING SUCCESS

Mike Esch, Dan’s uncle, founded the company in 1984, out of his garage.

“It was a mobile operation,” Dan says. Calls would come in, initially via pager with return calls on pay phones or from home, and then the products would be delivered. “It was a lean machine. A low overhead, profitable business.”

Dan came into the industry working for his uncle for nearly a decade at 100% sales commission. He was broke for the first couple of years as he worked to develop relationships and hone his skills.

However, what he learned from Mike about relationship building and customer service would become the foundation of Esch Construction Supply’s future success.

“He was famous for being fast and very responsive,” Dan says, noting that Mike answered his phone 24 hours a day and made deliveries on evenings and weekends. “He would answer his phone quickly, deliver his products quickly, and get you an invoice quickly. He was very service-oriented and that was the foundation of his success and our success.”

In 1998, Mike announced he wanted to sell the business, providing Dan the opportunity he had been seeking to potentially expand the business.

Early on, Dan recognized that to truly offer full service to customers, Esch Construction Supply needed to understand and sell the whole solution, including full service, parts, and repair.

His dream was to open a brickand- mortar store, sell equipment, and have service technicians to support the sales. Starting with a small expansion of product offerings, he added two sales reps who were a bit more mechanically inclined and willing to provide repairs when able.

“We quickly realized we had to hire experts that could help support the parts and repair department,” he says. The final push occurred in 2005 when Esch Construction Supply moved into a 5,000-square-foot space designed to wow the customer.

The home office in St. Paul now takes up approximately 10,000 square feet between showroom, office, repair center, and warehouse space to house 31 employees.

From the start, Dan believed the success in St. Paul could be scaled up and duplicated elsewhere. His wife, Elizabeth, eventually nudged him enough to take the chance.

“I was trying to oversee operations and sales and marketing and didn’t have time to work on developing the business,” Dan says.

Part of the confidence to scale included establishing a leadership team. The management team, including Jessica Kraus, general manager, was organized to determine how best to proceed in expanding.

Esch Construction Supply’s first branch office opened in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 2015. Once the concept proved successful, additional branches were added in Denver, Colorado, and Chicago, Illinois.

No matter the location, the foundation of the company stays true to Mike Esch’s vision of customer service.

“Our mission, our purpose, is to provide exceptional service to others, and it’s that service that we offer our customers at a very high level. Helping the customer select the best product for their application, to training their team, making sure everybody knows how to operate their equipment efficiently and safely.” Dan says.

At Esch Construction Supply, service does not stop once the product comes off the truck. From sales reps to warehouse associates, Esch employees are available to visit a jobsite and instruct a crew on safe use of a blade and tool or provide troubleshooting repairs on the spot.

“Once you get a customer to talk about what kinds of problems and challenges they are having, then it is a matter of determining how we can help,” Dan says.

Like most people, contractors and their crews are no exception to the rule of appreciating hands-on demonstrations of a new tool.

“We can all tell them that we’re going to help make them more profitable or operate more safely, but when we get the right piece of equipment and right diamond tool in their hand and let them run it, let’s face it, seeing is believing,” Dan says.

Demonstrations can vary from scheduled events at a jobsite to a scheduled event at the store. Occasionally, an Esch sales rep will conduct a demonstration with a blade while on a sales call. Other times it may be a vendor-sponsored event to promote a new product.

In addition, in recognition of their expertise in the concrete sector, Esch Construction Supply offers a line of training courses on safety, proper use and maintenance of various tools of the trade.

Sales specialists Phil White, James Nelson and Dan Brown are always ready to assist the next customer.

“We have a unique approach that gives us an advantage to help our customers,” Dan says. “One of them is that we get dirty, meaning that we’re in the field alongside the contractors wearing steel-toed boots and wearing the proper PPE.”

A common story among Esch Construction Supply customers is calling the store with a blade or application issue and having a team member from Esch Construction come out and troubleshoot, repair or train on the proper maintenance and use methods.

“We have many success stories like that,” Dan says. “Our techs are brilliant. They know the tricks of the trade and how to make things last longer.”

Another key to Esch’s success is the keen awareness of what their customers want and need and keeping those items in inventory.

No contractor, nor jobsite is too big or too small for Esch Construction to be involved. They’ve sold equipment and provided training to contractors working on $2 billion stadium jobs and they’ve sold equipment and trained the single owner/operator putting in a $20,000 driveway.

“It’s fun to be able to go on big projects and speak from a place of experience and not refer contractors to a catalog that’s an inch thick,” Dan says. “Our catalog is 16 pages. We’re able to say we’re real experts, and we can really help you.”

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 forced Esch Construction Supply to shift, in the short term, from its tried-and-true method of relationships and handshake business. While everyone continued to work, the company made a significant push into e-commerce and updated its website platform for more diverse communication opportunities.

With the upgraded web platform, customers can create accounts that link directly into their past order history, making it easier to reorder parts or blades.

Despite these updates, Jena says some long-time customers continue to write orders on a piece of paper and take a picture to text it in.

“We’re OK with that,” she says. “Whatever is most convenient for them. We try and offer all the options.”

Staying true to its own history, even as technology advances, Esch makes every effort to keep that human quality to customer interactions. The live chat on the website is supported by a live person. In addition, follow-up emails or further contact by phone or in-store is always with an actual employee.

For Dan, who admits to being what he defines as “an old guy,” the ongoing advances in technology can be intimidating as they require significant investment and must have good ROI for our employees and customers.

“I’m excited about what we’re going to be able to do in the future with automation and technology,” he says, adding that the strength of Esch Construction Supply is in knowing its customers, something which technology can be used to improve upon.

Outside of pure expertise and reaching out via the latest technology, Esch Construction Supply also has a history of community and industry service. The company’s Exceptional Service to Others committee regularly donates or contributes diamond tools, equipment, time, and scholarships to local trade schools and participates as active leaders in multiple trade associations’ fundraising and membership recruitment drives and local community charities.

“We are very involved in the community at each location,” Jena says.

Dan Brown displays the President’s Club Award, given each year to the Esch employee who lives all the core values at the highest level.

Like any distributor or contractor, finding new people is never easy for Esch Construction Supply. Although anyone can be trained to start a saw or install a blade, at Esch, managers are looking more at a person’s work ethic, positive attitude, and desire. They seek out those who understand and appreciate the concept of quality customer service and willingness to live and work by the company’s four core values.

Those core values are Service: Wow the customer; Growth: Always improving; Solutions: Find a way; and Team: Work together.

“We have the core values, and then we want to make sure that they have that mental, physical, and emotional capacity to do the job, that they understand what the job requires, and that they want it,” says Jessica Kraus, general manager at Esch Construction Supply. “I wouldn’t say we’re experts at the hiring process, but when you work for a company that values customer service, we can recognize when someone has that service level mindset and when they don’t.”

All new employees hired at any Esch location, spend a week at the St. Paul home office for the start of their training. In addition, all employees at Esch Construction Supply are encouraged to have fun.

“We make sure we have fun while we work so that people enjoy it,” Jessica says.

Esch Construction Supply invests in their people with training opportunities, employee engagement, team building and strategic planning. The company has also received Great Place to Work certification with 89% of the employees labeling it as a great place to work.

For Dan and the Esch Construction Supply team, the future is bright. Over time, the company has benefited from consistent, steady growth with plans in place to overcome any speed bumps or roadblocks that may arise.

Growth is possible financially, geographically, and even in terms of product and service offerings. The plan for growth includes expanding e-commerce, rental services, and innovative concrete solutions have been discussed by management.

“As far as succession, we work to develop leaders here, and to me, that’s the best succession plan,” Dan says. Dan admits to having many great options. Esch develops leaders who provide exceptional service and take care of the customers. They have a history of leadership development and promotion from within, with long-standing employees being an important part of the culture.

With his confidence in the company’s leaders, Dan will remain as president and visionary for some time going forward.

Outside of that realm, in this era of distribution mergers and acquisitions, he admits that the private equity firms and larger competitors have been calling. For now, he uses those calls as a learning opportunity to gauge the economic environment and what’s going on within the industry.

“If it’s someone in the industry I know, like Colony Hardware or White Cap, I’ll take those calls but if it’s someone out of New York with a name I’ve never heard of, those calls I’m not super interested in,” Dan says. “We’re a small business, with 47 employees and I know all the employees. If our future includes a merger or acquisition, I would have to carefully vet it so that our team is well cared for.”

“That’s what we love to do, bring on new customers to build more relationships, and develop our people,” Dan says. “That’s the way we will continue to grow.”

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CONTRACTOR SUPPLY MAGAZINE

The December 2024/January 2025 of Contractor Supply magazine is here!

Our cover story, A Diamond on the Rough, visits the family-owned Esch Construction Supply. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, the company sells and services anything that will cut, grind, drill or polish concrete.

Also in this issue are a 2024 STAFDA show report and Industry Updates on Abrasives Discs and Wheels; Grinders and Sanders; Cold Weather PPE and Heaters; Jobsite Lighting and Ladders, Lifts and Scaffolds.

This digital edition, sponsored by BECK AMERICA Inc., is fully searchable and contains live links to every advertiser and new product listing. Click away!