Right tools, right time: Acme finds its niche
By Gerry Gilmour
The Forum - 11/06/1999

GRAND FORKS, N.D. - Dan Kuhlman works out of a small office back by the drill bits.

Sure, as company president, he could have a big, corner office and leather chair in the Acme Electric/Tool Crib of the North corporate building across the street.

But then he wouldn't be near the tools.

"I like to be where the action is," Kuhlman says, stopping to inspect the sidewalk in front of the Grand Forks store.

He decides the walk needs to be blown clean. Not only blown clean, but blown clean with a gasoline-driven, Stihl-brand leaf blower.

Yes sir, that's the right tool for this job.

That's the whole point of this rapidly growing Grand Forks-based family business: putting the right tool for the job in the hands of contractors, craftsmen and do-it-yourselfers.

In fact, it's the Acme motto: "The right tool for the job gets the job done right."

Acme Electric/Tool Crib of the North must be doing something right. For the past five years the business has posted gains of at least 25 percent.

Acme Electric/Tool Crib of the North is one of the nation's largest distributor of power tool, construction equipment and woodworking tools. The business has more than 250 employees at its five retail centers and its corporate offices and catalog distribution center in Grand Forks.

Mail-order sales account for 70 percent of revenue, and that percentage is rapidly growing. The company mails more than 9 million of its glossy catalogs annually.

Acme's catalog division stocks more than 4,000 items the 177,000-square-feet Noah's Ark building, which was constructed in this city's industrial park following the 1997 Red River flood.

Heady times indeed. Yet the president of this business remains a humble man, because this is a business with humble beginnings.

Dan Kuhlman's father, George, founded Acme Electric in 1948 in a garage-sized building in downtown Grand Forks. George Kuhlman had a knack for fixing things. He especially had a knack for fixing electric motors.

People would bring power tools and electric motors to the shop for rewinding and repair. Some motors simply couldn't be repaired. That opened the door for George Kuhlman to begin selling new electric motors and power tools.

"When he started, he ran his business out of his wallet," Dan Kuhlman says of the father he lost in 1995. At the end of the month, George would empty the wallet, to see who'd paid, who still owed.

"He had a good sense of right and wrong, and he passed that on to me," Dan Kuhlman says.

He also passed on a penchant for long hours.

The lights at the Acme Electric shop on Third Street came on each workday at 3:30 a.m. George Kuhlman enjoyed work, and there was plenty of business from the start.

With the economy still recovering from the war, George Kuhlman never ordered more parts than he needed. He was proud that he didn't take on debt, even as his business was growing.

It grew into a larger building on Third Street in 1951 and again to a larger location in 1955.

It was a timely move. Contractors were moving into the region to construct Grand Forks Air Force Base, site of a new jet fighter interception squadron.

George Kuhlman didn't wait for the work to walk through the door. Instead, he did what today is known as "outside sales." In other words, he went out to the job sites and got the work, taking tools that needed mending back to his shop.

"There was nobody to repair all the power tools and pumps used on that job," Dan Kuhlman says.

Acme already had a solid reputation among defense contractors in 1958, when the Air Force announced plans to deploy missile installations out of Grand Forks and Minot.

Dan Kuhlman started working in the business while he was in the sixth grade, earning 10 cents an hour for cleaning up around the shop, wash parts and help with customers.

"So many people today use work as punishment," Dan Kuhlman says. "Take a kid 9 or 10 years old. A lot of people, when he's bad, will have him do odd jobs or clean up. That takes the fun out of work.

"Work should be fun. I've pretty much instilled that in my kids."

His two boys, Steve and Paul, like their father, went to work for the business as youngsters.

Dan Kuhlman, after graduating from high school, struck out on his own in California, but after two years returned to join his father's business.

Under his father's guidance, Dan Kuhlman expanded Acme's tool sales and service side, and "Tool Crib of the North" was added to the familiar Acme name.

The company quickly began adding product lines and service experts.

In 1967, it moved to its present Grand Forks retail location near the intersection of U.S. Highway 2 (Gateway Drive) and Washington.

Business in the Grand Forks area was booming: a new Northern States Power building, work on American Crystal Sugar beet processing plants, a steam heat system at the University of North Dakota.

They opened in Bismarck, N.D., in 1976, and benefited from the oil business, coal plants construction and eventually the coal gasification plant at Beulah, N.D.

Stores arrived in Fargo in 1982 (when Acme acquired the old Adams store) and in Minot in 1985, the same year Acme added its mail-order business.

Steve Kuhlman, vice president of the catalog division, joined the business in 1989 and Paul Kuhlman, Acme's purchasing manager, in 1994. The third generation took Acme Electric/Tool Crib onto the Internet with the creation of an e-commerce site in February.

The brothers have inherited their father's 12-hour-day habit.

"If your employees are going to put in long hours, you have to lead by example and do that, too," Steve Kuhlman says. "It takes a lot of work to make a business grow."

He says his father also reminds them often of the importance of taking care of employees and customers.

"Number one, you take care of the employees and make sure they have the ability to grow in the company. Number two is taking care of the customer, no matter what it takes," Steve Kuhlman says.

Driving his mini-van to his favorite lunch stop, Dan Kuhlman fields two business calls on his cellular phone. Kuhlman and his cell phone are inseparable. It's only turned off and set aside long enough to dine on today's special - pork dinner and a cup of potato soup.

"I don't hide from work," he says of the phone. "That's what this company was built on: 50 years of communication."

Honest communication. "Don't try to call green black," Dan Kuhlman says. "Tell the customer the truth, so you don't have to go back and try and remember what you told him."

Kuhlman says Acme employees are trained to know the tools they sell.

"If we have success, I give credit to everybody," Dan Kuhlman says. "We feel our stores are a showroom - a place where you can come in and try it before you buy it."

If you need a tool, he says, why go to general merchandise superstore.

"Why not go to somebody who knows power tools, and get the right tool for the right job," Dan Kuhlman says. "We're the power tool specialists - Tool Crib of the North, the name says it all."