Grand Rental Center, which originally focused on chair rentals, opened in Pueblo in 1963 when there was little rental competition. Tom Price started working there in 1971 while studying accounting at the University of Southern Colorado. By then the store had expanded heavily into equipment, and later into larger contractor items, but discontinued party rentals.

"They started going into other, different types of equipment," Tom says. "They used to be a U-Haul dealer. When I got here, they had just phased that portion of it out.

"I was doing the service work. Usually I would come in in the morning before I went to school and, at that time, we stayed open until 7 o'clock at night, so I would come back and work the late shift. I almost always had 40 hours a week, even with holding school down. Then in the summer I would work six days a week."

After Tom's college graduation, the owners offered him an accounting position. "So I stayed on and did that because I didn't have anything else planned," Tom recalls. "I was going to get my CPA license, but I enjoyed the work and thought the bookwork was really giving me a lot of insight and practice in accounting."

Tom became one of four stockholders in 1974. Six years later, one of the stockholders sold his shares back to the company and Tom began asking to buy out the business, although previously he hadn't really thought about being an entrepreneur.

"I kind of thought I would be a banker or something like that, do accounting work," he says. "The only thing I didn't like was wearing a suit and tie and I can't wear a tie here because it will get caught in a trencher chain or something. I just enjoyed what I was doing. I took over the books and decided to stick with it.

"I was ready. I had seen that the business would be a good income and a good livelihood," he adds. "So in 1985 I finally talked him [another stockholder Don Mathews] into selling his stock back to the company. So I bought his and then I bought [original owner] Stewart's [Mulhausen] stock, and we're still going on from there."

By the time of the purchase, Tom had attended many A.R.A. conventions. From that experience, he decided his new business should offer party rentals. Part of the sale included a building across the side street from the equipment store, which the previous owners rented out. When Tom bought the Grand business, he started a party store in this building.

The tool store is 5,000 square feet; the tool property along Grand Avenue covers about half a block. There is a 900-square-foot mechanic's shop behind the store, and a wash rack/service area is adjacent. Another small building on the property is used for storage.

In the late '70s, the previous owners had the century-old tool store stuccoed to give it a southwestern appearance. The Prices remodeled the interior of the store three years ago, partly to combat theft.

"We decided to keep the small hand tools behind the counter where we could keep an eye on them," Tom says. "It was Chellee's idea on how to set it up - the counter kind of goes with the angle of the store. We enlarged our counter space probably three times of what we used to have and put all of our small hand tools behind us where it's not easy access to customers. It keeps us a little more secure." The Prices also installed a security camera over the counter area.

It has taken customers a little getting used to. When the counter was first installed, customers would come back behind the counter and browse. But the idea has worked well.