Lots of kids go through Park High School, but not many of them get to open up a business on Main Street. One entrepreneur in town, owner of Riverside Hardware Daniel Durgan, graduated from Park High School in 1995. Durgan founded Riverside Hardware in 2016, after lots of hard preparation. After high school, Durgan attended college, and then began his journey of multiple different careers including; being a principal at a high school in Hawaii and building houses in his hometown Livingston. Durgan then decided to go into the retail business and began the process of starting a business from nothing.

Durgan put in a lot of work to start his own business and was very determined to succeed. One thing that he did to go above and beyond normal preparation, was to take lunch breaks sitting in the parking lots of local hardware stores and keep a tally of customers going in and out. Durgan hoped to gain a better understanding of how many people in Livingston bought hardware on a regular basis. After developing a detailed business plan, and meeting with multiple banks to find the best contract he could get, Durgan opened the doors of Riverside Hardware.

To this day, Riverside hardware is still open and expanding their inventory of various hardware items. You can find Durgan behind the front counter six days a week and working behind the scenes with his wife Julia Durgan managing all the intricacies of owning a business whenever he needs to. Despite all his preparation beforehand, Durgan would still recommend “Do all the homework and all the math like figure out how much money its gonna take and how much you have to make.” Durgan also shared that when starting his business, he wished he would have listened to less people. Durgan finished saying retail is way more rewarding than you think.