For Gregg Kunes and his family, what started out as a single struggling auto dealership has grown into something much bigger.
Delavan, Wis.-based Kunes Auto and RV Group now encompasses more than 40 locations and employs about 2,000 people. In 2022, it brought in over $2 billion in revenue.
The family owns several other businesses, including a financial services company and an e-commerce fulfillment company, and in the last few years they've set up a family office called Delavan Holdings. They built a new corporate center to serve as home to consolidated marketing and payroll teams and as a training space that the different enterprises can share.
“We're currently putting them into trusts and then putting boards over them, where we'll have our attorneys and our executive team and my family that all will have a vote on how to operate this company in the future. So, the legacy will continue. That's our hope,” says Gregg, CEO of the Kunes family enterprise.
‘Young Buck, Old Buck'
Gregg started working for Terry’s Lincoln Mercury — his father’s auto dealership in the Chicago suburbs — around age 19. That dealership was born out of Colonial Motors, the business his father started in 1959.
It helped that he was the oldest of 11 children. Building relationships came naturally to him. “He had to learn to be pretty diplomatic at a young age,” says Gregg's son Scott, who's COO.
Gregg worked his way up to general manager by age 40, and he aspired to more. But he reached an impasse with his father, who was only 59 years old and not eager to retire. Gregg describes their relationship as a “young buck, old buck” dynamic. It was unclear if or when Gregg could succeed him in the business.
“I was trying to push him out, and he was trying to hang on,” Gregg says.
Gregg decided to strike out on his own, and in 1997, he moved his family up to Delavan, Wis., where he purchased his first car dealership. That was far enough away that he wasn't directly competing with his father most of the time.
“I think at first there was a mixture of relief — because we’d bumped heads for a few years, nothing terrible — but also he was happy to see me go off on my own and see if I could make it work,” Gregg says.
For Gregg, it was time to sink or swim. While he still reached out to his father for advice sometimes, he could no longer rely on him as a backstop if something went wrong. “When all of a sudden it's all your money and all your loans and all your signatures and your failures or your successes, it's all on you, it does change quite a bit,” Gregg says.
The dealership he purchased was in bad financial shape and didn't have a good reputation in the community.
“The office manager was in there right away, saying, ‘We don't have the money to make payroll for this next payroll,'” Scott says. “So, [Gregg] ended up having to write personal checks for payroll for quite a while and started to build a dealership that really [had been] on the brink of bankruptcy. Through a lot of help [from] manufacturers and others in the industry that he knew, he was able to right the ship.”
Gregg had to go out and win back customers one by one in a process he recalls as “humbling.” He met with the mayor, the local grocery store owner and the farmers in the surrounding rural area. Rebuilding the dealership's community ties took about three years.
Then, the dealership across the street came up for sale. Gregg didn't want a competitor moving in, so he bought it.
The company continued to buy stores along a corridor from St. Louis to Green Bay, and it entered the RV business. Adding locations was helpful for growing the team because it gave people opportunities to move up and progress in their careers.
From Chef to COO
Scott started helping out as a teenager. He would go in after church and wash the service shop floors.
“I never felt like I quite got them clean enough. I never felt like they were really up to my standards, but everybody would tell me I did such a great job, and I kind of felt like they were just telling me that because I was the owner's kid,” Scott says.
He decided to try his luck in a different field. He first got a job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant before working as a cook. Later, he went to culinary school and became a chef.
He came back home for his brother's wedding, and some friends who were opening a restaurant locally asked him to join them. He agreed.
“After a while, I started looking at my brother working in the family business and how well that was going for him and looking at the long hours I was putting in at the restaurant. I kind of thought, ‘Well, maybe I should at least give the family business a try.' That was about 18 years ago and here I am, still trying it,” Scott says.
Scott's three brothers are also full-time employees in the business. A sister, who's an event planner, is in charge of the company's big Christmas party and other events.
There are enough diverse roles in the company that the siblings can each pursue their own professional interests.
“I think that there were some that wanted to be in the business and some that swore they'd never be in the business, but eventually it was natural,” Gregg says. “There's so many options — it's like five or six businesses within a business. So, when you're in sales or you're in service or you're in parts or you're in the finance side of it, it is multiples of businesses within a business.”
“We're able to work in our own lanes — and not run into each other or run over each other — and still have very strong family relationships,” Scott says.
Community Service and Christian Values
The culture at Kunes Auto & RV Group is grounded in the family's Christian faith. Their mission is to build the lives of their employees and customers and to serve their communities. To that end, they tithe the first 10% of profits. They also have about a dozen chaplains on staff to counsel employees.
When a Christian camp in East Troy, Wis., looked like it was going to have to close, they bought it and kept it running. They also stepped in to prevent the shutdown of a 200-plus-room resort in Delavan, which would have had a devastating impact on the local economy.
“The resort business is a very tough business, very small margin,” Scott says. “So, it wasn't exactly a place that was a great business choice to invest in. But for the communities that we're in, it was the right choice for us to keep this open.”
Charitable giving is also important to the Kunes family, and the company donates over $1 million a year.
Confronting Challenges
While the company has enjoyed rapid growth, it still experiences its share of challenges.
One is maintaining the Kunes' distinct Christian culture as they expand and hire more people. They want employees to feel personally connected to their mission, so they've started allowing dealerships and regions to allocate part of the tithe to local causes. Employees vote on where those funds will go.
It's also tough to predict the direction of the auto industry, which is strongly tied to the political climate. “When your manufacturer can't even tell you what they're going to build or what they can build, it's hard to train your people. It's hard to order,” Gregg says. “That's probably one of the biggest challenges I've ever seen in this industry. I can't believe that one election with one person and one administration coming in either way can have this much effect on our industry, but it does.”
And they're still working on finalizing a succession plan. “My father's worked in this industry for 40-plus years and this is his identity, right? And this is what he's built, and it's part of him,” Scott says. “So, I think navigating all of that from a place of love and trust, and just knowing where that's going and trying to do what's best for the business as a whole, has been difficult. We've talked a lot about it. I think we have great plans in the works. There's nothing set in stone, but great plans in the works.”
Family Bonds
The Kunes family says they are considering forming a family council. In the meantime, they work hard on strengthening family relationships and engagement through less formal avenues.
Gregg and Scott are both proud of the family's Sunday night dinners, which bring together Gregg and his wife, their six children and spouses, and all 17 grandchildren. People compare them to the family in the show Blue Bloods because of how often they all sit down at the table together. Unlike the family on the show, however, the Kunes family tries not to talk about work during those meals; instead, they focus on strengthening relationships.
They also travel as a family. “We take a family vacation every year together where the entire family goes, typically down to Florida, but we've been to other places as well,” Scott says. “And it's just really a time for us to continue to keep those family bonds and not allow the day-to-day problems to get between us.”