What started in 2013 as a niche home company, founded and operated by a 22-year-old, is now a larger team of designers, developers, and marketing ROKstars catering to DIY-ers, contractors, cabinet shops, and woodworkers.
From humble beginnings of selling a handful of soft-closing cabinet products, we are proud to now offer a wide range of home improvement products, both decorative and functional. That's why we created ROK Hardware: to bring high-quality specialty hardware to your doorstep. Did we mention the prices? Oh, you’re going to love these prices...
We are extremely grateful for our loyal and new customers that helped us get where we are today. Our company has grown beyond our greatest expectations in such a short amount of time. ROK Hardware is happy to offer a pick-up hub in Irvine for our local customers.
No need to search for hours, days, or weeks; ROK Hardware provides shoppers with the hottest home improvement hardware on the market at unbelievable prices. At ROK Hardware, we have big ambitions: to become the ultimate e-commerce company offering customers a wide variety of the highest quality home hardware products, with a fast turnaround time, outstanding customer service, and the convenience of ordering online for the lowest prices possible every time.
Our friendly, knowledgeable, and professional staff support our customers through education and problem-solving. Our dedicated staff will go the extra mile for customer requests. We will always do our best to obtain items requested by our customers. Our management is dedicated to providing our staff with the education, tools, and resources needed to provide exceptional customer service, which will always be reflected in our reviews.
CEO & Founder
Sean was 8 years old when he started his first company, formally auctioning off Pokemon cards to his neighbors. With an initial profit of $300, he had officially been bitten by the business owner bug; destined to create capitalist ventures that would drive him both personally and professionally for life.
His passion for buying and selling online was very apparent as a child and into his teen years. It’s no surprise that after working in the kitchen cabinet industry for 10 years, he decided not to venture too far off. Sean’s goal had been to offer the same high quality products found in big-box stores, but at wholesale prices. Searching the web high and low to find the best deals with raving reviews was what he’s always loved about e-commerce websites. That’s why he started ROK Hardware, to offer 5-star products at 2-star prices.
His experience in the kitchen and bath industry has been instrumental in the development of ROK Hardware. Sean prides himself as a very hands-on CEO. Sean oversees and assists in all aspects of the business; from customer service, to developing and executing the company’s strategy for sales, and even product merchandising. Though Sean wears many hats, he is best known for his world-class customer service and maintaining a positive vendor relationship with all brands and sourcing partners.
COO
Nathalie has been behind the scenes since 2013 when ROK, Inc.’s very first niche website was created, SoftClose.com. While teaching kindergarten full-time, she assisted with the creative aspects of the business. Her design eye has been a great asset to ROK Hardware in creating and designing content for our website and marketing campaigns. Having initially earned a degree in education from California State University, Fullerton, Nathalie taught school for 5 years, but has since channeled her logical approach and complex problem-solving abilities toward all things business. She stepped up as COO in 2015. She has played an integral role in creating a US fulfillment strategy to reduce the order fulfillment cycle time and prepare ROK Hardware for significant growth in the warehousing and distribution arena. She oversees the design team, marketing projects, product development, and other operations. Nathalie is responsible for site navigation and functionality, as well as category structure and standards.
While Sean (founder of ROK Hardware) worked in his family’s kitchen cabinet business, he noticed a pattern with all customers; no matter what kind of cabinets they ordered, they all wanted the soft-close feature built in. He took note that most of his customers did not realize that it was actually unnecessary to buy a whole new kitchen just to have soft-closing cabinets. Sean spotted an opportunity in the kitchen cabinet industry and, with his father’s blessing, decided to venture off into a journey of his own..
In 2013, he started SoftClose.com from his one-bedroom apartment. He solely offered the all-metal soft-closing retrofit damper and had much success with this single product.. However, that success was seemingly short-lived when he was given the news that the damper had been discontinued. Sean immediately purchased the rest of the inventory and, in return, sold out of it in record time. The manufacturers were impressed at how a 22-year-old could successfully brand and market a product that they had decided would be discontinued. Sean was able to bring this product back from the dead and the manufacturing processes started up again.
He knew that the only way to take his business to the next level was to offer more affordable home improvement products. As a new small business, persuading large companies to sell directly to him took some convincing. One thing is for certain, Sean’s abilities and integrity were solid and whomever he dealt with could sense that.
From there, ROK Inc., also known as ROK Hardware, was born, to bring specialty hardware to your doorstep.
At ROK Hardware, we believe that the key to our success is giving back. We are blessed that the growth of ROK Hardware has been a rapid journey, and we strive to give back as much as we can.
Listed below are some non-profit organizations that we support, as we try to share our success with those in need. We encourage you to browse their websites to view the work they are doing.
www.habitat.org
www.builderswithoutborders.org
www.buildinghomesforheroes.org
www.rmhc.org