Hardware Express

He Wasn't in the Hardware Business. He Was the Customer.

Beryl Junik's family business was real estate in Brooklyn. But real estate and hardware stores are more connected than people think: when you own and manage property, you're buying building materials constantly, paint, lumber, fixtures, tools, everything it takes to maintain and improve buildings. So when Hardware Express came on the market 20 years ago, struggling under the competitive pressure of Lowe's and Home Depot, Beryl didn't see a dying store. He saw a supply chain he was already paying into. He bought it.

What Beryl had that most distressed hardware store buyers don't was the financial stability to invest in growth rather than just salvage what existed. Over the next two decades, he expanded Hardware Express from a single struggling storefront into a thriving operation spanning five adjoining buildings, with 15 employees selling hardware, lumber, paint, tile, and kitchen goods.

The B2B Strategy That Changed Everything

While big-box stores fought over retail foot traffic, Beryl built something they couldn't easily replicate: a B2B operation focused on contractors and property managers. His real estate background gave him a natural understanding of what these customers needed, not just products, but reliability, account management, and the ability to track spending across multiple properties and jobs. Today, Hardware Express splits roughly evenly between retail walk-ins and B2B accounts, and that B2B side is where the strategic advantage lives.

The problem was that his point-of-sale system didn't support that strategy. The platform running the store hadn't meaningfully changed in years. It wasn't broken, but it was stuck, a retail-oriented system trying to serve a business that had evolved well beyond retail.

Property Managers With Invoices at Their Fingertips

The single biggest change after switching to Rundoo wasn't speed or a cleaner interface; it was what happened for Beryl's property manager customers. Hardware Express works closely with local property managers who buy across multiple properties, multiple jobs, and multiple visits. Before Rundoo, tracking those purchases meant paper trails, phone calls, and manual reconciliation. Now, those property managers have every invoice at their fingertips through the Rundoo app. They can pull up purchase history, view invoices by property or job, and pay bills directly from their phone.

For a property manager juggling maintenance across dozens of buildings, that's not a convenience feature. It's the reason they keep coming back to Hardware Express instead of driving to Home Depot.

"Our retail customers appreciate the elegant checkout experience. Our business customers appreciate the Rundoo mobile app. Our staff enjoys the speed. And I enjoy using the POS app, which allows me to monitor business metrics from my phone."

Five Buildings, One System

Running a hardware operation across five adjoining buildings creates a specific challenge: customers don't shop in one place. They might grab lumber in one building, paint in another, and fixtures in a third. With Rundoo's Wi-Fi-enabled card readers, Hardware Express can check out customers anywhere in the store, not just at a fixed register. New hires don't need weeks of training; they pick up the system on their first day. And Beryl can monitor the whole operation from his phone, whether he's on-site or managing his real estate portfolio.

When Rundoo went live, the team didn't just ship a login and disappear. They migrated all of Hardware Express's data, customers, products, historical sales, and flew from California to Brooklyn to get them live in person. They've continued meeting with Beryl's team regularly since, not as a vendor checking in but as a partner sharing ideas that make their way into the product.

The Philosophy That Built Both Businesses

Beryl has a clear philosophy, honed across both real estate and retail: the traditional approach no longer works. Customers, especially the younger generation of contractors and property managers, expect modern technology. They expect self-service. They expect to handle their accounts from their phones.

"You must utilize the latest technology to serve today's customers, particularly the younger generation. Whether you're deciding which products to stock, how to price, or what technology to use, you must be at the cutting edge to survive and grow."

Hardware Express doesn't compete with big-box stores by being cheaper. It competes by being more useful to the contractors and property managers who need a real partner, not just a store. Beryl built that business on that insight, and Rundoo is the technology that lets him deliver on it.