# Aurora Industrial Supplies > https://rundoo.ai/clients/aurora-industrial-supplies/ Hardware # Aurora Industrial Supplies Twelve days from signing to live, and margins up eight to twelve percent since Location Aurora, North Carolina Previous POS A cloud ERP Suppliers [House Hasson](/partners/house-hasson/index.md) ![Aurora Industrial Supplies logo](https://pub-5247264bd04e4ebeaecbbedb3bebb9f8.r2.dev/static/images/clients/aurora-industrial-supplies-logo.png) Patrick Williams was staring at a renewal he didn't want to sign. His family's store in Aurora, North Carolina keeps contractors and industrial crews across eastern North Carolina in replacement belts, batteries, hand and power tools, safety equipment, and custom-fabricated hose. Patrick runs operations. And in early 2026, the contract on the store's ERP was ending in March, with the renewal sitting in front of him and the meter running. He knew exactly what signing it again would mean, because he'd been living it. > "I felt like I was being taken advantage of, wasn't being heard. When we were having issues, there was no support. They'd basically say put your service ticket in and get in line." He didn't want to sign back up just to hit the easy button. So with weeks left on the clock, he started vetting alternatives, in what he calls a pretty hasty manner, because he's typically always behind the eight ball. ## The one who showed up Patrick looked at Rundoo and a few other platforms. Most of the vetting felt like a preview of the problem he was trying to leave, talking to people who were reading from scripts. Then Rundoo drove out to Aurora. Instead of another screen share or a call from a queue, a person came to his office the day after he called. > "What made you guys stand out the most to me was the fact that you came down here to see me. No one else did. It kind of meant a lot that you came down here and got in the driver's seat, actually in my office, to show me the demo." He made the decision that same day. Part of that decision was whether anyone would actually stand behind a switch this fast, and he gives Rundoo credit for knowing the implementation would be a chore in his situation and taking on the task anyway. ## Twelve days, doors open It took twelve days from signing to go-live because they were ready to go, with the store open and selling the whole way through. Patrick didn't choose the path of least resistance, running the switch on a tight clock to keep the doors open and minimize interruption. The data migration off the old system ran in the hours the store wasn't using it. Patrick was trading messages with Rundoo's implementation lead late at night and early in the morning, and the questions nobody had thought to ask yet got run down fast enough to keep the train moving. That's his grade to give, and he gives it without hedging. > "The implementation, in my opinion, I would give it an A from start to finish." Not everything mapped over one to one, and he doesn't pretend it did. They've had to create some workarounds along the way and change the way they do some things, which he says is never a bad thing. ## Day one at the counter Patrick is blunt about what he needed the system to be. He doesn't have the most tech-advanced guys using his system, so he needed something simple. The test came three weeks before this interview, when a new employee started. On day one, Patrick had him cutting purchase orders, entering orders, and entering new products. Patrick has used three or four systems since college, and he ranks this one at the top on the side of the business where speed is money, the counter. > "Especially on the sell side, you guys rock. I can have a customer in and out of here faster than you can get out of a gas station." ## Off the easy button Purchasing is the part of Patrick's job that changed the most. In the old system he'd look at ordering once or twice a week and let the software build it. Now the store's contract orders come in each morning, his team writes them up, and he builds purchase orders to his vendors on the fly from whatever isn't on hand. > "My purchasing, the way I do purchasing now, is totally different. And honestly, I've got a little bit better grasp on it. I have to be a little bit more involved than clicking the easy buttons." Five months of sales history later, Rundoo's suggested orders have caught up to the process he built by hand. If he steps outside the store's internal process, the system will more than likely come up with a very similar suggested order to the one he builds himself. And the day's numbers come to him instead of waiting to be pulled, in an email and a text recapping the day and pointing out the areas he needs to hone in on or the inventory he needs to look at. ## The price, locked at the counter Patrick doesn't reach for a soft number when asked what got better. During implementation he set the margin he wanted by category, and the price a product rings at is locked in at the point of sale, bin labels and all. Groups of items he buys at deep discounts are getting reviewed and repriced the same way. The old system gave him preset percentage buttons. This one gives him the margin he actually wants, item by item, and lets him change it on the spot when he needs to. He calls the difference night and day in how an item comes up at the point of sale and how quickly he can edit it on the fly, and he says the profit margins have increased tremendously. Asked to put a number on it, he did. > "I'd say probably in between eight and twelve percent." ## Ten out of ten, with one warning Asked how likely he'd be to recommend Rundoo to a peer at a trade show, Patrick didn't deliberate. Ten out of ten. Then he was asked what he'd warn that peer about, and he gave a real answer, which is worth more than the ten. > "We sell a lot of things that are metal, and the volatility of that causes those prices to change a lot. If I were to cut a PO and there'd be fifty items with fifty different prices, then I've got a PO sitting out there that I might have to do some math editing to, or kill that PO and recreate a new one. That's honestly the biggest knock I can think of." Five months in, that's where Aurora Industrial Supplies stands. The busy season is behind them, the workarounds have settled into routine, and Patrick calls this stretch the calm after the storm, the slower months where he plans to dig into the parts of the system the store isn't using yet. He keeps coming back, though, to the same thing that won the deal. "It meant a lot that you came down here to take the time to show me and make me feel comfortable with Rundoo," he says, because switching was a huge decision to make. He made it with weeks to spare, kept the doors open through the switch, and came out the other side with better margins and a day-one-simple counter. The renewal never got signed. Kathy Williams Owner, Aurora, North Carolina Share this story [← All client stories](/clients/index.md) Suppliers & partners [House Hasson](/partners/house-hasson/index.md) ## Recommended reading [![Ordering from Bradley Caldwell, PACOA, and your farm-and-home distributors](https://pub-5247264bd04e4ebeaecbbedb3bebb9f8.r2.dev/static/images/articles/pos-for-bradley-caldwell-pacoa-dealers-thumb.jpg) ### Ordering from Bradley Caldwell, PACOA, and your farm-and-home distributors How farm, feed, and pet-supply stores that buy from Bradley Caldwell, PACOA, Wallace, and Orgill turn distributor ordering into a search and a scan instead of a portal and a clipboard.](/insights/pos-for-bradley-caldwell-pacoa-dealers/index.md) [![Net-30 without the headache: contractor charge accounts for paint stores](https://pub-5247264bd04e4ebeaecbbedb3bebb9f8.r2.dev/static/images/articles/contractor-charge-accounts-paint-stores-thumb.jpg) ### Net-30 without the headache: contractor charge accounts for paint stores Contractor charge accounts are the financial backbone of a paint store, and doing them right means house accounts, per-customer pricing, clean statements, real aging, and a way for painters to pay from their phone instead of the shoebox-and-spreadsheet workaround a general POS forces on you.](/insights/contractor-charge-accounts-paint-stores/index.md) [![Farm accounts, seasonal terms, and getting paid at harvest](https://pub-5247264bd04e4ebeaecbbedb3bebb9f8.r2.dev/static/images/articles/farm-charge-accounts-and-seasonal-terms-thumb.jpg) ### Farm accounts, seasonal terms, and getting paid at harvest How farm and feed stores run charge accounts on the growing calendar, from house accounts and per-customer pricing to statements, aging, and seasonal terms that let producers pay after harvest.](/insights/farm-charge-accounts-and-seasonal-terms/index.md) ## More hardware stores on Rundoo [### Damascus Do It Best Hardware Damascus, OH](/clients/damascus-hardware/index.md) [### Adam's True Value Hardware Scranton, Pennsylvania](/clients/adams-true-value-hardware/index.md) [### B-Town Plumbing and Electrical Supply Berryville, Arkansas](/clients/b-town-plumbing-and-electrical-supply/index.md) ## Keep exploring Rundoo [### Rundoo for hardware stores See how the platform is built for a store like this one.](/industries/hardware/index.md) [### Tour the product POS, inventory, payments, and AI in one system. See what runs the counter.](/product/index.md) ## See Rundoo run a store like yours Book a demo and we will walk you through how Rundoo works for a store like yours, at your pace and on the questions that matter to you. [Book a demo](/signup/index.md) [(312) 319-1142](tel:3123191142)