Marden Hardware is a long family story! My grandfather started Marden 80 years ago in Yonkers, NY, a few doors down from our current location. He and his brother had wanted to start a hardware store, and once that got going, they never looked back. My father and uncle got involved too, so it was a family business that always surrounded me. During college, I ventured out and interned at Sony Music, getting a taste of a different world. Through the influences of my father, though, I was eventually drawn back to Marden, where I’ve been ever since.
In those early days, I was continually running around, running the floor and daily operations. Within five to six years, my role increased, and I started to take more control of the business, the back office, and more strategic elements like ordering. During this time, I realized that the path forward and the key to long-term success would mean pursuing change and innovating how we operate. The current course, with my elders at the helm, felt stuck in the past, and I was motivated to bring new energy and ideas to our business, like focusing more on contractor relationships, the recurring jobs business, and exploring new technology.
When it came to a POS, we were on Rocksolid for a long time—close to 20 years. We were comfortable with it, although it felt antiquated and corporate. And when it came to product updates or even customer support, it didn’t seem like anything got done—not to mention the fact that it often disconnected and was unreliable.
I wasn’t proactively looking for another POS but was opportunistic and eager to learn more when my Benjamin Moore rep introduced me to Rundoo. In the beginning, there was a lot of mutual discovery with my Rundoo contact, Max, sharing hardware industry knowledge and hearing about Rundoo’s fast-growing point of sale. They wanted to learn more and build a product that made sense for my business. I enjoyed being a resource, sharing my knowledge, and playing a role in how they developed the product. After several months of building a relationship with Rundoo, witnessing integrations with True Value, the creation of key functionality like rule-based tiers, and seeing the strong product feedback loop with clients, it became clear that staying with my existing POS did not align with my goals of modernizing and keeping up with the times. When we made the decision to move to Rundoo, the team, including Nick, the founder, went above and beyond to get our data into the system; the level of involvement and support was unique, and I was grateful for that experience.
We recently switched to Rundoo and can already feel the difference and the value. Actions that took minutes, like searching for customers or adding new products in our old system, now take seconds in Rundoo. We’re no longer jumping between counter and back-office systems because data is centralized in one web-based tool. The onboarding and training for my team have been easy and intuitive, and while we’re excited about the Rundoo team and the support that’s available, we haven’t had questions or issues that we can’t figure out on our own. It’s been a positive switch so far, and I look forward to a long partnership with Rundoo.
