The Vermont Sales Timeline: 1985 to present

1985

Roland Hunt had the agency for the Vermont American brand of power tool accessories.
Roland together with Dave Goodman set up a small import and distribution company - and so Vermont Sales was born.
Mindi Hunt was recruited as the sales rep for the small venture intended to be a side-line to Dave's retail tool business and Roland's agency business.
Mindi, new to sales, quickly built up good relationships and soon a 2nd rep was employed.
Theo Willems traveled as far as the Free State, throughout Pretoria, and further north.
Dave Ruthenberg was selling in KZN and Kay Matthews was taking the Cape by storm.
Suddenly the little business was growing!

Ryan Hunt returned from his successful international MX career and joined the small team, which was now into it's 7^th year.
Dave Goodman left the business and Vermont Sales became solely owned by Roland Hunt.
The business moved premises to its 1^st Midrand home, a tiny storage unit at Tilbury Business Park, along with those first employees, Sam, the delivery driver and Piet, the amazing warehouse man.
At the same time Angela, Roland and Mindi's daughter, having just finished her B-Com studies, was offered a 6-month internship to help get Vermont Sales back on it's feet. Angela became the most important member of the Vermont Sales team, looking after both finances and staff.
Headcount in both the warehouse and sales staff increased, and very soon the new premises were outgrown - even with the help of Freddie Sekwala - who was a security guard at Tilbury.
Freddy joined permanently as we moved up the hill to build our first warehouse at Hightech Village.

Hightech Village proved to be very a successful move for Vermont Sales.
More staff were hired on all fronts - Anton Riekert, Paul Rousouw, Kissoon, Roger Freemantle, Dale Engelbrecht, Anita Vosloo, Shuwetha Makardood, Daniel Melin, Peter and Natasha Mabena, Tamara Moyo, Benson Moyo, Tembani Tshuma, Barry Irvine, Neilen Vilioen, Joey Gopal and many others joined us during those years.
A few new brands were added to the VS offering - PG brand accessories, Alpen drill bits and Pony Clamps.
During this time, our core brand supplier, Vermont American, a large USA manufacturer, was bought out by Bosch International. Bosch SA took on the distribution of all Vermont American products, and gave Vermont Sales 30 days to hand over all products and business!
Something of a shock to everyone, indeed! Galvanised into action, the Hunts decided to keep their well known company name - Vermont Sales - but to create their own brand of accessories, and thus Tork Craft was born!
Several other brands were swiftly added to the offering, Olfa, Schroder, GAV, Pro-Tech, and with the amazing support of their customers, business grew from strength to strength.
The 1^st and 2^nd building at HighTech Village were soon outgrown and Vermont Sales embarked on another building to house the growing enterprise.

With 3500 square meters of space, just down the road, but still in Midrand, it has proven to be a perfect area in which to trade from.
We again required additional staff and we were lucky to hire the amazingly competent Werner Henning to run the finances of the ever-growing enterprise.
Again, many new, world-renowned brands were acquired to be represented by Vermont Sales, and we embarked on hosting several very successful "Open Days" to showcase these to our ever-growing retail customers.

8 years later, Suni had been outgrown! The search for a new spot ensued.
There was one empty piece of land available - not really large enough, we knew, but we undertook the challenge of building a state-of-the-art warehouse and office facility.
8 Suni Avenue has remained ours, and is now the testing centre and a small, world-class, exhibition centre!