Tag Archives: Keys to Success

EDCO offers customers a handyman Nirvana

ThisWeek Keys 08/23/2012

http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/Key-Bank-Keys-to-Success-stories/2012/08/edco

The owners of EDCO Tool and Supply pride themselves on offering more than just a tool store; it’s a hands-on handyman Nirvana.

Brothers Sam, Jerry and Barry Edelman grew up working in their father Ralph Edelman’s tool business in Lima, Ohio, eventually taking over and opening a headquarters warehouse store at 445 Phillipi Road in Columbus in 1983.

“We grew up in this business and it runs through our blood,” Sam Edelman said. “We’ve worked here since we were little and we get so many people in here that say, ‘you guys are so lucky that you work in a candy shop.’  We feel the same way: We get to work in this handyman’s nirvana every day.”

According to his son, Jerry, Ralph Edelman opened the original EDCO Tool and Supply store at 1100 E. Kibby St. in Lima in 1946, right after World War II, as a way of supplying individuals and industries in transition from wartime to peacetime manufacturing.

“The Lima branch is still there with 60,000 square feet of showroom and warehouse,” he said.  “We’ve been established for 66 years now and have over 400,000 square feet total between our locations.

“We moved into Columbus because we saw how much it was growing and what a great community it was. There was so much industry here and no full-line industrial supply house, so we knew this was a good fit.”

According to Sam, the brothers have all worked at EDCO for 40 or more years, and their current employees have been there for at least 20 years each. As representatives for more than 400 different manufacturers, the brothers believe they can keep pretty much any job on track.

“Besides our selection, our knowledge of our products and the years of experience we have in this business is a big advantage for us,” Jerry Edelman said. “So if a customer isn’t sure of how to do a job or solve a problem, we can advise them on both how to do it and what tools to use.

“Instead of just one or two types of pliers to choose from, we have like 50 or 60. Same thing with any hand tool,” he added. “That means instead of having a job sit for a week, waiting for the right tool, we help other businesses keep making their money.”

The brothers said this knowledge and product selection is key to their success. However, according to Jerry, that is only a part of the equation.

“Our success is because we listen to our customers and what their needs are,” he said. “Things are different now than they were 20 years ago and we’ve adapted. Our primary goal is giving our customers complete satisfaction so they tell others and come back.

“We have a much wider selection and better grade of products then our national competitors, including a lot of American-made stuff, as well as high-quality imports for the discerning shopper.”

Sam Edelman said he believes both EDCO and central Ohio’s futures are looking bright together.

“We’re constantly busy these days and we see the economy improving,” he said. “We see a really bright future, and we see a bright future for Columbus — so goes our community, so goes our business.”

For more information about EDCO, visit one of the stores or go online to www.edcotool.com.

Family business has become a food empire

ThisWeek Keys 08/23/2012

http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/Key-Bank-Keys-to-Success-stories/2012/08/carfagnas

The “Cleve Meats” sign still adorns Carfagna’s as a reminder of this Columbus food empire’s humble beginnings on Cleveland Avenue.

Owners Sam and Dino Carfagna, along with their bookkeeping sister, Julie Riley, trace the history of Carfagna’s specialty foods, Carfagna’s Kitchen restaurant, and the Carfagna’s soup and pasta sauce manufacturing facility back to their grandfather Sam Carfagna’s meat shop on Cleveland Avenue, aptly named Cleve Meats.

From those roots, Carfagna’s grew to employ 100 people across three businesses.

“My grandfather Sam emigrated here from Italy in 1920 and worked various jobs before learning this trade in the downtown Columbus packing houses,” namesake grandson, Sam, said. “He opened his first market in 1937 on Cleveland near Hudson with a house on top of it where we were all born.”

In the late 1960s, the current owner’s father, Eddie, and their uncle, Adam, took over the market, moving it to its current location at 1405 E. Dublin-Granville Road.

“Dino and I came into the business shortly after dad took over,” Sam Carfagna said. “We started working at a very early age, before we were 10 even, stocking shelves through middle school and cutting meat through high school, learning the trade.

“The work is so demanding that sometimes it was the best way to see dad, and it’s the same for us now.”

Sam and Dino bought the business from their father in 1994 and opened a manufacturing facility to mass produce the family’s pasta sauce and soups, as well as other Italian specialties, available in grocery stores and specialty food shops throughout Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“The plant opened in 1994 and has been a real winner for us,” Sam Carfagna said. “We offer our pasta sauces and other specialties through retail grocery outlets and then also provide bulk products to the food service industry.

“That business is growing rapidly and we’re in the process of moving into a larger facility near the market, which we hope to have completed this month,” he said.

The family opened Carfagna’s Kitchen in 2007 as a “fast casual” restaurant at 2025 Polaris Parkway.

“There’s no secret that a majority of food growth is in the restaurant sector. Many people eat out more than they eat in,” Sam said. “We felt with our catering and distribution experience, we could put out homemade Italian food for tremendous value ourselves, so we opened the restaurant to feed busy families on a budget.”

He said the family’s business success is tied directly to hard work.

“This is very labor-intensive and we have to work when everyone else is partying, on weekends and holidays,” he said. “We need to be here for our customers; we value them and they value that type of service.

“My father always said every day will be a challenge, but owning your own business will have plenty of rewards,” he added. “It’s helped raise all of our 11 kids and put a lot of kids through college, both ours and our employees’.”

Sam said his grandfather taught him about listening closely to what a customer wants and then giving them a product and service with superior quality and integrity.

“I’m standing here behind everything we do, and there is no one else to answer to what we do but ourselves,” Sam said. “Everything we do here is fresh and we provide every customer with a personal touch.”

As for the future of Carfagna’s, Sam said he’d like to open more restaurants and expand the food manufacturing.

“It’s nice to see how proud my children are of our family’s accomplishments and that we’ve been able to be a big part of the community,” he said. “We have a large family and the number one greatest attribute ofour kids is that they’re smart, educated and professional. When any of them are ready to take on the task of this business challenge, they know they are welcome.”

Solid foundation is at core of software company

ThisWeek Keys Story 06/28/2012

http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/Key-Bank-Keys-to-Success-stories/2012/06/rc-olmstead

When Robert Olmstead started his financial services software company, RC Olmstead, in 1978, he developed a straightforward solution to Ohio bank’s needs.

That foundation was solid enough that the Dublin company is still serving those first clients.
 
RC Olmstead is currently one of the largest providers of financial processing systems to credit unions in Ohio, serving 18 percent of the market.
 
“When Bob wrote his first software package in his garage, he determined there was a niche opportunity in the credit union industry,” company president Steve Kambeitz said. “He’s an engineer and built a model around what they needed.
 
“Our very first client merged with another bank, but our second ever client is still with us today.”
 
At a time when so many companies have gone through mergers or gone public, RC Olmstead has maintained its independence, Kambeitz said, with Olmstead remaining the sole owner.
 
“He hit the right idea at the right time and was good at what he did,” Kambeitz said. “Because of that, we’ve maintained our independence, even with larger technology providers working around us.”
 
Kambeitz said this independent streak provided the company with a solid foundation, focusing on a simpler business model up front until the firm had matured enough to take the next step.
 
“In the beginning, Bob wrote everything; for the first 10 years, he did it all himself and accumulated five credit union clients before hiring his first employees,” Kambeitz said. “Up until about 10 years ago, we built everything we delivered, and then we decided we were ready to offer other solutions to our clients for things like ATM transactions that were running through our systems already.”
 
RC Olmstead didn’t need to build those solutions itself, Kambeitz said. Instead, it formed partnerships which have allowed it to grow beyond being a software company to being a solution-based organization.
 
“At first, we were a technology firm, but now I’d say we’re a service-based firm,” Kambeitz said. “The whole financial institution model is basically simple but has become more complex due to the different modes of transactions — it’s not just cash — and the associated regulations. So we have to stay ahead of that to continue to provide services that can compete with institutions with bigger budgets.
 
“If you looked at our business just a year ago, we had 25 employees. This year, we have 32 because of another new partnership we’ve entered into, allowing us to offer a brand new core processing system.
 
That’s almost 30-percent growth,” he said.
 
According to Kambeitz, the company’s keys to success have been Olmstead’s understanding of his business’s niche so he could build a solid foundation, keeping pace with technology, strategic partnerships and hiring employees who have a passion for the work.
 
“We have people who are able to listen to our clients and provide what they want. They have the same passion toward our business that made Bob successful before us,” Kambeitz said. “The credit unions’ mission is to serve the underserved, and it is our mission to serve them so they can serve their members better.”
 
For more information about RC Olmstead, visit www.rcolmstead.com.

Nuanced products are rooted in Ohio agriculture

ThisWeek Keys Story 06/28/2012

http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/Key-Bank-Keys-to-Success-stories/2012/06/middle-west-spirits

When the owners of Middle West Spirits opened their business, they were less concerned with capturing the marketplace than in capturing the flavor of a place, Ohio in particular.

Owners Ryan Lang and Brady Konya hope their whisky and vodka products have done both.

“We made a decision early on to go against the grain, so we have a line of unfiltered, traditional Eastern European-style spirits like you’d find in Russia or Poland that are about championing flavor. Grains are just like grapes: They have nuances based on the region they’re grown,” Konya said.
 
Most Americans, Konya said, subscribe to the idea that spirits such as vodka should be flavor-neutral, so Middle West Spirits spends time educating consumers at 1230 Cortland Ave. near Victorian Village in Columbus through what the owners call “branded manufacturing.”
 
“The space was really designed as an educational venue. It doesn’t look or feel like 100-percent manufacturing. It’s very creativity driven – a mashup of retail and exhibition – branded manufacturing,” Konya said.
 
“We designed a cathedral around our product with a retail frontage. This is also a chance to contribute to the idea that urban revitalization comes through people and businesses being productive, so we are creating things that become part of that story in Columbus.”
 
Lang and Konya originally relocated to Columbus from the East and West coasts, respectively, leaving behind their own careers to support their partners’ careers at Abercrombie and Fitch.
 
“Ryan and I met over dinner one night. He has an industrial engineering background and I have a marketing and advertising background,” Konya said. “We moved here with the intent of being supportive plus-ones, but when you have two very entrepreneurial guys, well, we needed to be more than just supportive.
 
“Ryan also happened to be a fourth-generation distiller from an Italian bootlegger family. So that lineage and our collective background led us to this.”
 
Neither man knew much about Columbus before moving to the city in 2007. They soon realized it was a world-class location for creating their specialty spirits.
 
“Columbus is an epicenter for agriculture, all of the grains available here that no one was championing, so we want to reflect the origin of flavors, from here where they’re grown,” Konya said. “The community here is really open to new things because it is diverse, younger and more affluent than we imagined.”
 
Federal and state regulations and taxes have been a challenge to running a small distillery, Konya said. By focusing on a larger regional and, possibly at some point, a national market, the company is overcoming those barriers.
 
“This business was a risk since, currently, the liquor system is designed more for billion-dollar companies. We see what we are doing as reintroducing a type of production to Ohio that we (as a state) left in the 1920s when everything was shut down (for Prohibition),” Konya said. “Our products have been received fairly well regionally. We’re distributed up and down the East Coast in seven different regions.”
 
Konya said the keys to their success have been hard work, educating customers and being unapologetic about the products’ Ohio roots.
 
“This is an Ohio story,” he said. “Ryan and I have stayed on the clear path … we have a goal to build a legacy business in Columbus that is part of the fabric of living here.
 
“A company is an ecosystem for an idea, not just a product, so we are maintaining a clear path to that vision.”
 
For more information about Middle West Spirits, visit www.middlewestspirits.com.

Seasonal business becomes year-round success

ThisWeek Keys Story 06/28/2012

http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/Key-Bank-Keys-to-Success-stories/2012/06/cuthbert-greenhouse

The Cuthbert family is a perennial name in central Ohio seedling and flower production, and the third-generation owners of Cuthbert Greenhouse Inc. continue to grow on past success.

“We started in 1952. My grandfather started the greenhouse growing hothouse tomatoes and other vegetables for the local farmers’ markets,” owner Brett Cuthbert said. “From there, we expanded into annuals and holiday crops until finally, my father expanded us into a year-round, full-season greenhouse business.”

Brett Cuthbert shares ownership of the business with his brother, David, and cousin, Greg Cuthbert. According to Brett, the boys started working in the greenhouses as children.

“We started working here when we were about 6, and we’ve worked here our whole lives, mostly,” he said. “Our dads wanted us to go out and learn how other businesses ran before we came back. So after college and some time working elsewhere, I was the last to return in about 2001.”

Cuthbert Greenhouse is primarily a wholesale business, run out of two central Ohio locations: 4900 Hendron Road in Groveport and 12061 Federal Road in Orient. Brett and David manage the Groveport location, and live across the street from it, while Greg lives in front of the Orient location, which he manages.

“The main location in Groveport includes 11 acres of temperature-controlled greenhouses, while the Orient location has 4.5 acres of greenhouses,” Brett said. “Out of those, we produce about 80,000 bedding flats of plants annually. Our biggest seller right now is our 10-inch hanging basket – we do about 250,000 of those a year.”

To manage this amount of production, the Cuthberts employ 40 regular staff members and during peak season, will bring on another 40 temporary workers.

“We pretty much ship to other retailers, grocery store chains and big-box stores like Kmart. We also do some contract growing for other greenhouses and for landscapers,” he said.
 
According to Brett, a key to the Cuthberts’ success has been successfully anticipating trends and maintaining a diverse, regional customer base.
 
“The biggest thing is the ability to change …, to stay with the changing market and making sure we’re on the right path when that happens. To do that, we’re always changing our flower lineup and trying new things,” he said. “With the economy being down, people want to grow their own vegetables, so we’ve seen our vegetable numbers jump significantly.”
 
And to satisfy that residential, retail customer base, Cuthbert Greenhouse has opened a small retail store.
 
“We started a small retail shop out in front of the Groveport location, so after 50 years as a wholesaler, we’re on our third year of doing limited retail,” he said. “There is a trend of people staying home on their vacation time and beautifying their yards, so this helps us be a part of that.
 
“Also, the big push these days is about buying local. We support buying local ourselves and are getting involved with the Ohio Proud organization to further tout that.
 
“We really like working with our communities, being involved, and we’re proud to be here in Columbus,” he said.
 
For more information about Cuthbert Greenhouse, visit www.cuthbertgreenhouse.com.