- October 30, 2024
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A husband-and-wife entrepreneur team in Sarasota has gained international recognition thanks in part to their customer service skills.
Stanley and Natalie Kinnett won the Franchisee of the Year award for their Metal Supermarkets store, near Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport. It is among 125 Metal Supermarkets across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Toronto-based Metal Supermarkets was founded in 1985 with the goal, according to its website, to create a "metal distributor that would cater to small-quantity buyers and serve a wide and diverse range of industries."
A lot of factors, meanwhile, went into the Kinnetts recognition. One example: Since opening their store in Sarasota in 2018, the Kinnetts have maintained a 93% customer loyalty and satisfaction score. This is measured by several components, Stanley says, including a survey emailed to customers after their experience with the store.
Whenever reviews come in from surveys or Google, the Kinnetts take them seriously.
“If they say ‘My material was cut crooked,’ that’s really a problem, and we walk that [feedback] out and show the operators and say we need to be more careful,” Stanley says.
“We also follow up with that customer. Stan calls them and says, ‘What can we do to make this right?’” Natalie adds. “We’ve often said we cannot always beat our competitors on price, but we can always beat them on service.”
One way Metal Supermarkets distinguishes itself is by going the extra mile — literally.
“We had a customer just a couple weeks ago who said, ‘I always buy from you guys, but this one [order] needs to go to the far tip of the Keys,’” Stanley says. Normally, the delivery area for the Sarasota store runs from Sun City Center in Hillsborough County to Fort Myers. “Our truck doesn’t go that far, but we found somebody that would and delivered it to the Keys.”
Another customer wanted a 40-foot beam about a year or so after the business opened, Natalie recalls. “We were so new that we had yet to figure out how to ship it,” she says. One of their clients had a car hauler, so she says they called and asked if that person could take the beam. It was “a little unconventional, but we got the job done,” Natalie says.
The Tallevast Road shop in Sarasota is one of 11 Metal Supermarkets in Florida, where the Kinnetts also own another, in south Orlando.
The business in Sarasota has seven employees and so does the location in Orlando. Workers come from a range of industries, including hospitality, car sales and convenience stores.
Sarasota Store Manager Nick Kinnett, who is also the Kinnetts’ son, has a background in restaurants, with a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales as well as a degree in business management, Stanley says.
“He brings that perspective of, if your steak is not right, I’m going to make it right. So if your metal is not right, I’m going to make it right. That’s just the philosophy that’s been successful,” Stanley says. “You’ve got to understand how to take care of customers.”
Their niece, K.C. Neill, who is a senior customer service representative, also came from the hospitality industry.
“K.C. is the one who when a car pulls up, she goes and pulls their paperwork and when they walk in the door, greets them by name,” Natalie says. “She’s the reason someone said, ‘It’s like Cheers when I walk in here.’”
The store carries 8,000 SKUs and can cut and deliver products. Since customers often want a quote over the phone, it’s important to know the inventory and be able to work quickly, the Kinnetts say.
“The last thing we want to have happen is a customer hang up the phone with us, we say we’ll call you back in an hour, and they just pick up the phone and call somebody else. That’s kind of our whole mindset,” Stanley says.
Customers in Sarasota run the gamut from construction firms to welders to hotels to machine shops to lion and elephant owners who need to build fences, Stanley says. Some of the company’s clients are artists using the material to create sculptures and theaters like the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota.
“It’s a little different here than it is in Orlando,” Stanley says of the client base.
“In Orlando, we don’t sell too much to Disney directly but we sell to a lot of people who do work for Disney,” Stanley says. “We sell to Universal. The convention center. That’s all our territory in Orlando, which is why we bought it.”
While the Kinnetts decline to disclose revenue figures, a plaque on the wall in the Sarasota store shows the Metal Supermarkets in Sarasota joined the $2 million club in 2023, and the Orlando location is in the $1 million club. (They opened the Orlando store in 2021.)
In Sarasota, business took off during COVID-19 — through which Metal Supermarkets stayed open.
“We never shut down once,” Stanley says. “That was a big catalyst” for growth, as competitors closed for weeks in some cases. “Our business never slowed down."
They also donated thousands of pieces of metal for mask nose pieces during that time, Natalie recalls.
The pandemic was not the only emergency that caused an uptick in business. After hurricanes, Stanley says, people flock to Metal Supermarkets because they need to rebuild their lanais and other structures.
Since opening, the Sarasota store has quadrupled in sales, he says.
It has also doubled in size. It ran out of room in the original warehouse and needed more space for machines that did things like cutting metal, Natalie says. When the owner of the space next door wanted to clear out, Metal Supermarkets took it over so it could expand.
Now the shop in Sarasota has a production bandsaw, which cuts steel; a shear that cuts sheet metal; two bending machines; drill presses; and several other heavy-duty machines.
“We don’t have a plasma cutting machine yet,” Stanley says. “We go back and forth since we need somebody that knows how to run it.”
Finding the right people to build the employee base is a core challenge.
“You cannot go out and find somebody that knows the metal business,” Stanley says. “So what we look for first is attitude. We look for personality.” In addition, he says, the company makes sure employees have “good old math skills” and are comfortable with fractions and geometry as well as handy with a tape measure. “If you can’t measure it correctly, then you can’t cut it correctly,” Stanley says. The company also employs people who speak Spanish.
To reward employees for excellence, the Kinnetts came up with an incentive pay program.
“The incentive is based on hitting targets,” Natalie says. Those can include sales, invoice counts and absenteeism. “There’s a lot of factors that encourage the employee to really step it up.” The incentives are awarded each quarter and can have a “significant” impact, Natalie says.
“We want to be profitable so we keep the business going, but we like providing jobs for people,” Stanley says.
“We’ve also been willing to take a chance on people that couldn’t get hired because of their background,” Natalie says. One employee in particular was referred by a temp agency that said he was loved by his last six or seven employers but had something in his history that could be of concern. “That was three years ago. He’s been a fantastic employee,” and for the first time in his life, he owns his own vehicle and just became a homeowner in the last year. Says Natalie: “Sometimes people just need a break.”
Owning Metal Supermarkets is the first time the Kinnetts have worked together outside their home.
“Her full-time job was running the family,” Stanley says, as the couple raised five children over 20 years.
Now, Natalie is the one who pays the bills and takes care of suppliers for the business, according to Stanley, who oversees the warehouse and operations. His background includes leadership roles at major companies.
“I worked for Whirlpool for almost 30 years,” Stanley says. “Then we moved to Florida, and I was CEO of a steel fabrication company for 10 years.”
Once the company, Dixie Southern, was sold and he thought it was time to retire, Stanley says, “I got a call from a business broker” who asked whether he had ever considered owning an industrial franchise.
After flying to Toronto to learn about Metal Supermarkets, Stanley says he “called [Natalie] that night and said, ‘This is it.’”
Six years later, the couple says their stores in Sarasota and Orlando are in some months among those with the top sales in Florida. Says Stanley: “Sometimes the phone just doesn’t stop ringing.”
Other times, customers walk in. Two weeks ago, a man came to the store with a stainless steel piece the shop had sold him for an outdoor kitchen, according to Stanley. The customer said: “‘This one I can’t take. It’s bent.’ And I’m not kidding you, if it was bent, I could not tell,” Stanley says.
“I actually argued with him for a little bit. And then I said, ‘Is this the first time you’ve bought from us?’ And he said, ‘It is. And I do a lot of big houses,’” Stanley recalls. “I said, alright, I’ll replace it. I had to order a special sheet. It cost the business money. I never thought I’d hear from him again. This morning, he placed another order. When people ask me why I do it, that’s why I do it. Because he remembers that we took care of him.”
