Randy Rude is what they call a boomer.
“I went wherever it was booming,” Rude says of his 30-year career as a Seattle-based union ironworker that took him as far as Alaska, Australia and Korea.
Rude relocated to the Ozarks in 2006 and parlayed his 5-year-old ironworker gear websites into a storefront along U.S. Highway 65, near the CC exit in Ozark.
“I learned what the brotherhood was all about, but I lost fatherhood. That’s why I moved down here, to be with my grandkids,” Rude says. “I don’t want to lose that.”
Rude was familiar with the area having chased construction jobs to set iron for Dixie Stampede in Branson and City Utilities’ southwest Springfield power plant. Having walked in those shoes, Rude now sells nearly $1 million of gear a year to ironworkers and others construction tradesmen online and in his Ozark retail store.
Along came the InternetThrough
HardHatGear.com and the original,
IronworkerGear.com, Rude has gained quite a following.
It started on a whim birthed by an unlikely source.
“I always thought when I retired, I would sell tools, gloves and safety glasses out of the back of a truck. All of a sudden, the Internet came along,” Rude says of his 2000 epiphany in Washington state. “I didn’t know how to turn on a computer. I went out and bought a book, ‘How to Build a Website for Dummies,’ – that was me.”
When he moved to Ozark, Rude brought enough product to fill a single aisle in his store. Now, he operates two websites and the 4,500-square-foot Hard Hat Gear store, where protective hats of all colors dangle from the ceiling and Rude’s personal, worn tool belt hangs on a shelf.
“I don’t want to ever forget where I came from,” he says.
The core business is online, where 85 percent of sales originate. Rude distributes from his Ozark store but also is connected to a network of 16 warehouses operated by ORS Nasco for drop-shipping.
“We buy direct from the manufacturer,” he says, pointing to Klein tools and American Heritage shoes.
He’s cracked into Amazon.com and currently has about 1,000 products listed on the site. Rude started the year selling $5,000 a month on Amazon, and now he says sales are up to $30,000 a month.
While Rude plans to double his product volume on Amazon next year, he says working with the online marketplace giant has been a learning experience.
“Amazon, you know, is a love-hate relationship,” he says. “It’s the Wal-Mart of the Internet.
“You depend on them too much and if they don’t like you, or you make a mistake, then you’re down the tube with them. You really have to be careful.”
About 10 percent of Rude’s sales are through Amazon, and by growing those transactions, he’s actually watched gross sales slide a bit. Two years ago, he topped $1 million.
“It went down this last year because we’re opening up some new markets with Amazon,” Rude says, noting margins are slimmer in order for Amazon to get its cut and shipping is often free on the site to remain competitive. “We bend over backwards because we notice how much business there is there.”
He says sales this year are on pace to return to the $1 million threshold, with three-fourths stemming from
IronworkerGear.com.
Next step: ScalableTim Gardner of Nixa Public Works prefers to shop in the store.
The assistant superintendent in the city’s electric department stopped in with a colleague late last month looking for fire-resistant Carhartt clothing, but they found Hard Hat Gear didn’t carry the brand. He walked out with a few work gloves, hard hats and a hammer.
“We’ve been buying our leather gloves there the past year,” Gardner says, noting other department tool purchases are made at Nixa Hardware and from the HD Supply tool truck.
Carhartt isn’t Rude’s first obstacle with popular brands. Years ago, he had to stop selling Redwing shoes after a distributor relationship broke off under corporate pressure.
He’s turned his attention to create his own private-label brand, called Rudedog USA, after his nickname on jobsites. The house brand produces leather pouches and tools, such as the spud wrenches manufactured by Stanley Proto Industrial. A Rudedog trick is to dip the wrench in zinc for ironworker “bling,” he says.
Before the business takes the next step, Rude says he’s got to step out of the way.
“I need to stop relying on myself and develop it into a real business,” he says, adding he’s searching for software solutions to streamline for scalability.
For instance, online orders are processed manually and the company has no outside salesmen, which has limited regular sales to large contractors.
“Like anybody else, you’ve got all these fires in front of you to put out, you never get to the big one behind you,” Rude says. “I’ve got to do that.”
One fire is redesigning the 8-year-old websites. He says IronworkerGear.com was scheduled to roll out Nov. 25. “We want to get the kinks out before Cyber Monday,” he says.
True to form, Rude handled the redesign himself.
“They’re not looking for flash,” he says. “They’re just looking for product.”[[In-content Ad]]
