COOLIDGE HARDWARE is named after Coolidge Square here in Watertown, Massachusetts. The store has served our community for nearly 100 years, since 1931. And in all that history, it has always occupied the same location at 622 Mount Auburn Street.
My family didn’t enter the story until 1971, when my great uncle Charlie bought the business. Eighteen years later, in 1989, my dad Manny took over from him. I was in high school at the time, and I was thrilled to spend my nights and weekends helping him get the business off the ground. Little did I know it was the start of a 35-year journey!
My dad and I still run the store today. You can find us behind the counter most days of the week. Even better, my son Vinny has recently dabbled in the business. He is only in his early 20s, and he is figuring out where he wants to leave his mark on the world. But there are times when all three of us work together in the store, and they are some of my happiest days at Coolidge Hardware.
It’s remarkable how much is the same today as 35 years ago. We sell the same products to the same community on the same wood floors. Despite all this sameness, one big change has taken place: our technology. In the ‘90s, we got our first computer and set up a point-of-sale system to track sales. About five years ago, that system started to crash repeatedly, so we switched to a new system.
Then, about a year ago, a tall man named Max walked into our store. He was working on a new system named Rundoo that was designed specifically for hardware stores in the 21st century. He genuinely sought to understand our business, and it was fun to teach him all about our store. In all honesty, we were not interested at first. Our existing system worked fine, and the idea of change felt daunting. But as we saw more of Rundoo, we realized we had to switch. It was modern, easy-to-use, and ultimately would create a better experience for our customers. Let me share a few features that stood out to us.
The first is great search. We have a lot of customers, and they expect us to keep track of their sales history. We store POs, color history, job sites, and more for our customers. Rundoo’s search is incredible — it’s like Google on our data. In one box, I can type PO, job, customer, product, or anything, and the system will show me the best results.
The second is industry data. Rundoo maintains a database of all colors and all products across various manufacturers. So when we add a paint product, we can start typing the color code or name, and it pops right up with a beautiful swatch. And for all products from the popular hardware distributors, the image is right there to ensure we are working with the right product.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, is the ease of switching. As we had experienced once before, changing point-of-sale systems is risky, and we were nervous. No matter how incredible a system is, it may not be worth it if things go south during the switch.
But as soon as we signed, Rundoo began preparing for our transition. They transferred all of our data out of our old system and into Rundoo: products, pricing, customers, vendors, and balances came over seamlessly. They spent time with us walking through our questions. And they gave us a chance to test out the new system to ensure we felt comfortable. We could really visualize running our business on Rundoo and the ways it would transform our operations.
We set a date for the final switch a few weeks out. Max and one of his coworkers, Jonathan, offered to come out in-person, which was incredible. They configured the hardware, brought our staff up to speed, and generally provided a calming presence. They’ve done this dozens of times, and we’ve only switched systems twice! The night before go-live, Max, Jonathan, and the Rundoo team transferred our final customer balances and inventory. We were ready to rock. And the next morning...everything worked great! Our customers immediately noticed the modern system. We spent the day getting our customers set up on the Rundoo app so they could see their entire purchase history and easily pay their bills. Our customers really appreciate the upgrade.
All this to say, I highly recommend Rundoo. Coolidge Hardware is nearing its hundredth year. For all the change technology brought in the past hundred years, I’d guess it will be the biggest source of change in the next hundred, too. We are confident that Rundoo is the right partner to help us navigate that change.
