In this week’s Friday Profile, I’d like to introduce GardenLine listeners to M&D Supply.
I often send Golden Triangle listeners to their store in Beaumont, but they also have six affiliated stores - four in the Houston area! M&D Supply happens to be part of the Greater Houston Ace Retailer Group, so they are way more than just the heritage Beaumont store these days.
I’ve always loved sending people to M&D if they call my show from the Beaumont region. They have that great old-school philosophy of helping every customer with a big smile. Their mission statement for years has been Make Customers Happy! And don’t be surprised if you find those smiles when you visit any of M&D’s related stores. They’ll always encourage you to “Round up Your Change” for local charities … they’ve raised over $130,000 this year through the program and just contributed to Toys for Tots for the third year in a row. So, if you said “yes” to rounding up at their registers, you contributed to this effort!
Let me explain the M&D history:
In 1967, E.W. McCown, Mary Mitchell, and Jack Dyson opened M&D Supply in Beaumont. In 1971, however, a fire destroyed the building and everything had to be liquidated. In 1972, under Jack alone, M&D celebrated its grand re-opening. Five months later, though, Jack passed away from cancer. His wife, Bernice, assumed ownership and overnight became the proud owner of a hardware store. In 1979, Jeff Dyson, son of Jack and Bernice, came into the business and earned his stripes by surviving the difficult economy of the ‘80s. Jeff eventually became president and owner of the company, and during the ‘90s guided M&D through multiple expansions and added a lumberyard. Growth continued when he opened locations in Vidor ('02) and Lumberton ('04). In 2010, third-generation owner Scott Hatcher took the reins, and in 2017 M&D Supply purchased four Ace Hardware stores in the Houston area. The quartet in Cypress, Clear Lake, Rosenberg, and on Beamer Road in Houston were formerly run by the Williams family and affiliated with the Central Ace Hardware Group.
So today, M&D Supply has more than 240 employees with seven locations to serve residential and commercial customers throughout Southeast Texas.
And, here, I’d like to spotlight one very special employee in Beaumont - Johnnie Johnson. Johnnie has seemingly helped just about every GardenLine listener who has come in with a product request or a gardening question. She has been a treasured employee for more than 25 years and has developed quite a following of loyal customers who regularly seek out her vast knowledge. If you’re not sure what is growing in your yard, bring a sample in to Johnnie and be amazed as she quickly identifies the problem and offers the most practical solution. What fertilizer do you need for your roses? How do you kill Virginia Buttonweed? What should you use to treat fleas? Johnnie is practically an extension of GardenLine and can answer questions like those in her sleep. But you won’t catch her sleeping at work. She’s always on her A game. As her Halloween costume below suggests, Johnnie can recommend the right potion to solve almost any problem you have. And as long as I host GardenLine, and as long as we get questions from the Golden Triangle, I will certainly send people to Johnnie for help.
Here is the complete M&D family of stores:
- The original M&D Supply in Beaumont - 580 College St.
- Ace Vidor - 1230 N. Main St.
- Ace Lumberton - 122 S. Main St.
- Ace Clear Lake - 2422A Bay Area Blvd.
- Ace Cypress - 13140 Louetta Road
- Central Ace South Houston - 11676 Beamer Road
- Ace Rosenberg - 3714 Avenue I