By James R. Hagerty
By CEO standards, Bob Kierlin had modest needs.
The co-founder of Fastenal, an international seller of nuts, bolts and other supplies for manufacturing and construction firms, took a salary of $120,000 a year at its peak in the 1990s, with no bonuses or stock options; that was less than some Fastenal store managers earned. He clipped grocery coupons, and bought some of his suits secondhand, for $60 apiece. On business trips, he stayed in discount motels and often shared a room with a colleague. He paid for his own meals on the road.
Kierlin wasn't hurting financially: He had shares in the company worth hundreds of millions of dollars from his original stake. And the company's board was willing to pay him far more. But Kierlin said he didn't need it.
"I was born into a family that never had an awful lot of things," he told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. "We just learned to live with what we had. I never felt I needed a lot of money."
Kierlin, who died Feb. 10 at the age of 85, didn't have a personal secretary or even his own parking place outside the drab concrete head office in his hometown of Winona, Minn. Much of the furniture inside that headquarters was used.
A CFO learns a lesson
Shortly after Dan Florness joined Fastenal as chief financial officer in 1996, Kierlin invited him on a trip from Winona to the West Coast to meet investors. Florness was surprised to learn they didn't need to book airline tickets. They would be driving -- starting around dawn and continuing up to 16 hours a day. That saved money and allowed for more store visits.
Along the way, Kierlin stopped for lunch at Burger King and chose Super 8 or comparable motels. Driving down lonely highways in Nebraska and Wyoming, Florness learned the Kierlin creed of extreme cost control and decentralized management.
Before joining Fastenal, Florness had grown up on a farm in Wisconsin and worked for the accounting firm KPMG. He found Kierlin's thriftiness refreshing and now serves as CEO of the company.
Kierlin, who favored short-sleeved white shirts and khakis bought at Kmart, was frugal out of habit and on principle. "It sends a message that we are not wasting anything," he said. "We do buy good equipment when we need it. But we won't spend money on things like desks and furniture and shelving for our stores."
When Kierlin found holes in socks, he threw them out -- but kept their intact mates and was delighted if later he could match those widowed socks with others of the same hue.
Though he was generous in donating to educational, fine arts and other causes, he refused to have his name put on buildings. In June 2006, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that his shares in Fastenal were then valued at $440 million and that he had distributed about $100 million to charities and nonprofits and to Fastenal employees through gifts of his own stock. His philanthropy continued after that date as the value of his stock soared.
The company, whose current stock market value is about $44 billion, thrived under his leadership, from its founding in 1967 through his retirement from the board in 2014. It has remained highly profitable.
A nickel to sweep
Robert Allyn Kierlin (pronounced KER-lin), the youngest of five children, was born on June 1, 1939, in Winona. His father, Edmund J. Kierlin, owned an auto-parts store, where young Bob was paid a nickel to sweep the floors. His mother, Dorothy C. (Dahm) Kierlin, worked for a maker of spices.
As a child, Kierlin was in a hospital for more than a month to undergo treatment for torticollis, a neck ailment. He said the charitable support his family received for that treatment spurred his later philanthropy.
Kierlin graduated from a Roman Catholic high school, earned mechanical engineering and M.B.A. degrees at the University of Minnesota and served as a teacher in the Peace Corps in Venezuela. He then worked for International Business Machines, where he analyzed manufacturing costs. At IBM, he disliked what he saw as a top-down management style.
In 1967, Kierlin persuaded an IBM colleague and three of his high-school friends to join him in founding a company. The name Fastenal derives from the sale of bolts, screws and other items used to "fasten all kinds of things." Kierlin's original idea was to sell industrial supplies through vending machines, but many products didn't fit into vending slots, so the company switched to humans, who could answer questions and go out to solicit customers. (Fastenal later added vending machines for some sales.)
Rather than hiring a lawyer to write Fastenal's articles of incorporation, Kierlin studied state statutes and wrote the document himself, using the blank sides of used paper. In the early days, he also saved money by collecting used candy boxes from a nearby alley and using them to deliver goods to customers.
He wanted store managers to figure out things on their own. They were allowed to change their product mix to suit local demand, without waiting for permission from headquarters. "There's a confidence that comes with making decisions, messing some things up and fixing them," Florness said.
Kierlin sought employees who were curious, liked solving problems and understood they could learn more by listening than talking. He shared his 10 rules of leadership, including "remember how little you know" and "challenge rather than control."
MAD magazine humor
His humor derived partly from a childhood love of MAD magazine. If he couldn't answer a question, he recommended asking Quasimodo, "who might have a hunch." He dressed up as Elvis Presley for one corporate video.
Typically, he arrived at the office at 5:30 or 6 a.m. When his daughters were in school, he called them from the office to make sure they were up and then sang "Wake Up Little Susie." Family vacations included frequent stops at Fastenal stores.
As a Republican state senator in Minnesota from 1999 to 2006, he pushed for more local autonomy in public schools. "We have a lot of rules and mandates for schools to follow and that's the exact opposite of how a private business would work," he told Industrial Distribution magazine.
Kierlin's first wife, Stefannie Valencia Kierlin, whom he met while volunteering in Venezuela, died in 1999. He married Mary Burrichter in 2000. She survives him, along with his two daughters, three grandchildren and a sister.
Will Oberton, who succeeded Kierlin as CEO in 2002, recalls visiting him a couple of years ago and noting, atop his desk, a coupon offering two pies for the price of one at a local supermarket. Oberton couldn't hide his amusement at the founder's continuing quest for good deals. Kierlin shrugged and asked, "Why wouldn't I?"
Write to James R. Hagerty at reports@wsj.com
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March 13, 2025 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
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