The owners of Du Quoin’s Do It Best had a problem. Their business was thriving, they were moving inventory daily … but their stock was housed in a warehouse miles from their shop. With help from Champion Community Investments, the owners were able to build a new warehouse walking distance from their shop.

Toler’s Do It Best Gets New Warehouse With Help From CCI

Toler’s Do-It-Best, located on historic Main Street in Du Quoin, Illinois beats the conventional wisdom that you can’t make a living in small town America.  To the contrary, Donnie and Joanne Toler are prospering and expanding both their floor space and inventory, standing firmly in an antiquated yet productive reliance on rock-solid customer service.  Champion Community Investments is proud to recognize the Success Story still being written by Toler’s Do-It-Best.

The business was founded over 60 years ago by Mary and the late John Klob, Joanne’s parents, as a Western Auto. Joanne was essentially raised at the store and has been a Main Street Du Quoin fixture since she was a little girl.  When Joanne and husband Donnie took the store over, the tradition continued as their daughters also grew up in and worked at the store.

There is an old saying about physicians, to the effect that family practitioners know less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything.  Conversely, specialists know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.  Not true of Donnie and Joanne Toler!  They seemingly know everything about everything, can discuss all of their various lines of merchandise and, on the rare occasion that they might not have all the answers, they will find out. That’s quality customer service in action.  

Their Do-It-Best store carries everything from appliances to paint to tools to tires to hardware to lawn care equipment and outdoor furnishings.  With financial support from Champion Community Investments, they recently completed construction of a new building in Downtown Du Quoin, the first new building in recent memory.  The new building houses and displays their wide variety of lawn care products and serves as a warehouse for inventory at their fingertips.

Toler’s Do-It-Best, in Downtown Du Quoin, may in some respects be a throwback to an old way of doing business, but that old way still works in 2018 and nowhere better than with Donnie and Joanne Toler.  Theirs is the kind of Success Story that just give the naysayers pause, and that should give us all hope that great customer service, competitive pricing, and a thorough inventory is still a winning formula for success.