South Beau Hardware & Supply

Paladin Helps Couple Establish Their Niche in Hardware

When Trent and Diana Taylor moved to Longville, Louisiana in 2019, it didn’t take them long to find their calling. “When we were building our house, we’d have to drive close to 30 minutes to get supplies,” Diana explains. Trent had wanted to run a hardware store, so they set out to open South Beau Hardware & Supply. With a little providence and help from Paladin Data Corporation and Orgill Distribution, the store has become a rousing success.

South Beau Hardware & Supply was chosen as New Business of the Year in 2023 and the best hardware store in Southwest Louisiana by area residents in 2024.

“It’s been a wild ride, but we believe this is what the Lord had planned for us. The doors flew open. It’s been almost three years, and it’s been really good!” she says.

South Beau Hardware & Supply has a lot of things going for it. Like Diana says, there’s not a lot of local competition – 8 miles is the closest. The area is very rural – there’s not a single stoplight in Longville – but its location – near Lake Charles – has it growing rapidly, so they get a lot of business from contractors and do-it-yourselfers. It has a great location on Highway 171, right across from the area’s elementary and middle schools, and, thanks to southwest Louisiana’s pipeline construction and maintenance, there’s a lot of commercial and light industrial business.

When the Taylors began looking into what it would take to open a startup hardware store in their town, they wanted solid products and support from their supplier and technology provider. Diana says they found both in Orgill and Paladin Point of Sale.

“It was basically doing a ton of research. Paladin focuses on hardware and their customer service, you really can’t beat it,” she says.

Paladin provides an easy-to-use point-of-sale system, with an inventory management program that is both sophisticated and intuitive. Paladin’s Market Driven Inventory Management utilizes transaction data to learn what South Beau’s customers purchase and when to provide suggested order reports that make ordering through Orgill EDI fast and easy. Paladin fully supports all Orgill programs including Impact, which gives the store an e-commerce site.

Along with helping the Taylors streamline their ordering and inventory management, Paladin also makes it easy for Diana to keep track of the store’s bookkeeping.

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Diana and Trent Taylor’s hard work earned South Beau Hardware a 2023 New Business of the Year honor.

Paladin Pilot allows store owners to remotely access their business network from anywhere there’s an internet connection to keep tabs on store performance or, like Trent, place orders after hours.

Adding up all the positives for their startup store has helped South Beau Hardware & Supply record $2.2 million annually in its young life.

The Taylors are also generous to their community with sponsorships and by hosting various fundraising events.

“People around here are big on supporting the community. We host a lot of local events, helping the kids out,” she says. “We’ve been very blessed.”