Happy New Year!
We’re especially excited this year because 2010 is our 25th year in business. Looking back on the last 25 years, we’re having fun remembering how we got here. This is the Kole Imports story.
In 1985, after a few successful years of selling merchandise in local swap meets, Rob and Danny Kole founded Kole Imports along with their father Art and mother Pearl. They realized that there was money to be made by directly importing merchandise and wholesaling it to local wholesalers and retailers. The Koles quickly found success importing and wholesaling auto accessories. This was a great time to be an importer, as the dollar store phenomenon was heating up in the United States, and the Koles increased their product line to include thousands of dollar store items. The Koles postioned themselves as dollar store specialists, and in the next few years became a leader in the wholesale dollar store merchandise industry. As time passed and sales increased, the product line was expanded and improved, and Kole Imports moved to a bigger warehouse, office and showroom and hired more people to help grow the business.
Committed to value and variety, and mindful of their customers’ need to make a good profit, Kole Imports created the Profit Source Philosophy, which permeates every aspect of the business. The Profit Source Philosophy is quite simple: Kole Imports is committed to being their customer’s best source of profit. This means seeing things from the customer’s perspective. “Is this item an outstanding value when sold in my store?” “Will I make a good profit on it?” “Will it sell quickly?” “Is it attractively packaged?” “Is it retail-ready, easy to display, and UPC tagged?” Thinking like the customer and ensuring that they make a good profit has ensured Kole Imports’ success and has brought them to their 25th anniversary stronger than ever.
Rob and Danny Kole are always looking for new win-win opportunities, and they’ve come up with some great new ideas over the years. Their biggest project, promopallets.com, was very ambitious, but it was worth it. The Koles realized that many retailers would love to have more merchandise to sell in their stores if it was easy to set up in their POS system, easy to set up in their store, and came with its own display box. Kole Imports created entire pallets and half pallets of merchandise in displays which can be placed on the sales floor, unwrapped, scanned into the POS system (just 1 UPC code for the whole pallet), and are ready for customers to buy in under 10 minutes. Kole Imports also offers smaller free-standing displays and counter-top displays on the promopallets.com site as well.
Over the last 2 years, the Koles have focused on expanding their line of closeouts, and their customers are loving it. Kole Imports is constantly searching for great closeout deals on high-quality items to offer to their customers at super-low prices.
Kole Imports has come a long way since 1985, and here are the pictures to prove it.
Kole Imports Booth in Las Vegas in the 1980s. Rob Kole (mustache), Danny Kole (yellow shirt) and Art Kole (white shirt & blue pants on the right).
Our booth at the current Las Vegas Wholesale Merchandise Show.
Is that Mister Kotter or Richard Simmons? Nope. It's Rob Kole in the original Kole Imports Office.
The Original Kole Imports Office and Warehouse.
The Current Kole Imports Office.
The Current Kole Imports Warehouse.
