The National Corvette Restorers Society (NCRS) features Keen Parts in The NCRS Driveline
Our friends at the NCRS will feature the following article in the May-June issue of their newsletter, The NCRS Driveline. Tom is a long-time NCRS member and calls thousands of members both a customer and a friend.
Keen Parts: Family owned and operated
Walk into Keen Parts and you’ll notice the customers on stools at the parts counter, shooting the breeze with a salesman who usually knows them by name. There is a pinball machine in the corner and it feels more like Floyd’s Barbershop than an international parts business. There is more to Keen Parts than meets the eye.
Walk through a Corvette swap meet and you’ll notice the big red awning on the Keen Parts trailer. Underneath it you’ll find 5,000+ parts, a customer or two and a sleepy-eyed man in a sweatshirt who has an encyclopedic knowledge of vintage Corvettes. Yes there is more to Tom Keen than meets the eye as well.
Motor oil runs deep in Tom’s veins. He started attending car shows with his father as long ago as he can remember. They would often travel to shows in his father’s Model A (which still sits in his mother’s garage just down the street from the Keen Parts store). He still has the white 1969 Corvette that was his daily driver back when he was as an insurance adjuster, but it doesn’t get driven as much as it used to. He also owns an unrestored 1963 convertible that will get restored “someday” when he has the time.
The Keen family lives Corvettes and loves Corvettes
When Tom started Keen Parts, in his mother’s kitchen table back in 1982, he had no idea the business would eventually grow large enough to employ 12 people, that it would require nightly phone calls to his colleague David in Taiwan, and that it would allow him to become a NASCAR sponsor. “We’ve been very fortunate,” he says, “Not many people get to make their passion into a business.”
With single-minded devotion to their business, Tom and his wife TJ have grown Keen Parts until it now encompasses the original store, a large wholesale building across the street and a new 4,000 sq. ft. warehouse that is just being constructed. They even live on the upper floor of the original store, on the banks of the Great Miami River, just minutes west of Cincinnati. “Integrity, customer service and personal relationships are the keys,” Tom says.
He uses his ever-present cell phone to maintain those relationships, constantly talking to customers, competitors, hobbyists, and anyone else who will help propel his business forward. He employs a team of friendly, knowledgeable Corvette enthusiasts who will take the time to find the right part for Keen Parts’ customers. “I don’t want just order-takers,” Tom says, explaining that the purchasing experience should be more like old friends working on their Corvettes in the garage.
Tom followed the same philosophy in the construction of his website (keenparts.com), spending hundreds of hours to identify the parts on the 1,100+ diagrams in order to “make it easy enough for your mom to use.” If a customer has an unusual request for a part that is not in his 25,000+ part inventory, Tom will employ some of those extensive personal contacts to dig up a used version. It is this horse-trading that still brings a spark to his eye, even after all these years.
Lifetime Corvette customers become lifetime friends
After meeting Tom at the 2010 NCRS National Convention in Charlotte, Marco Hartner, owner of Punta Gorda’s Midyear Factory decided to give Keen Parts a try. “Quickly I realized that he actually meant what he said! Being able to communicate with a person who has the parts on hand is priceless to me. You will NEVER hear ‘The computer says…’ “
“Our work relationship rapidly evolved into a personal friendship,” says Hartner. “Tom is one of the key manufacturers in the Corvette parts business who actually listens to our input and constantly searches for ways to improve the quality and availability of Corvette parts. Many underestimate his presence in the Corvette hobby.”
If the demand is there, Keen Parts will often reproduce a rare part, such as the 1963 split window mouldings. They recently brought the mouldings to market, gambling the enormous tooling costs to get them manufactured. Keen Parts currently produces more than 500 high-quality reproduction parts that keep our Corvettes looking and driving like new.
Keen’s Racing Heritage
Thankfully, the gambles have paid off more often than not! They allow Tom and TJ to sponsor race teams at all levels of competition across the US. Many race under the Corvetteparts.net banner, while others sport the Keen Parts logo. Matt DiBenedetto, who drives the NASCAR Monster Energy Go Fas Racing #32 car is sponsored in part by Keen, as is Shannon Poole, star of Street Outlaws: New Orleans, driving his 1964 Corvette dragster. Mark Wertz is a veteran short-track driver and longtime Corvette fan and owner who is sponsored by Keen Parts as well. Mark drives in the NASCAR Whelen All-American series. Seventeen-year old Nate Jenkins runs in the ABC Spartan Stock Series in Mason MI. Carson Kvapil (age 14) and his brother Caden (age 11) who run karts at Millbridge Speedway in Salisbury, NC make up the rest of the Keen Parts racing family.
Keen and the NCRS
The Keen family joined the NCRS soon after they started Keen Parts. Keen Parts retail store is located right down the road from Gary Mortimer’s home. The NCRS National Offices were located there on Day Road for nearly forty years! Tom has supported the hobby with constant advertising support in the Driveline, National Convention sponsorship, and participation in local and regional meets. He recently hosted the Queen City Chapter meeting and even printed an NCRS membership application in the front of tens of thousands of his catalogs, resulting in hundreds of new NCRS members.
According to one customer, Keen Parts is now “big enough to help but still small enough to care.” So the next time you need a part for your Corvette, either at a meet or over the phone, the team at Keen Parts will be happy to take the time to get you the right part. Remember there is more to Keen than meets the eye!
Tom Keen (far right) and the road show team
The National Corvette Restorers Society
NCRS was founded by a group of people from the Midwest who wanted to learn more about their Corvettes. In the early 1970’s- there was no internet, no “Corvette books” and no way to find out what an “original” Corvette looked like. Today a Google search for “Corvette” returns almost 100,000,000 (One hundred MILLION) hits. NCRS membership grew from the Midwest and now covers the world with nearly 10,000 members. Read more about the NCRS.
Keen Parts and CorvetteParts.net
Keen Parts is a leading manufacturer and retailer of Corvette parts and accessories. CorvetteParts.net is their website alter-ego. We have over thirty years of happy customers all over the world and look forward to helping you with your Corvette needs. We are not some anonymous Corvette website. Our retail shop and warehouse are located in Cleves, Ohio north of Cincinnati. We are right off Interstate Highway I-74 and only six minutes from Cincinnati. We stock parts available for Corvettes from 1953 to the present. If you own a C1 through C7 Corvette- we have the Corvette parts and accessories you need!
Business hours
- Monday through Friday 8 am to 6 pm
- Saturday 9 am to 3 pm
- Closed on Sunday to be with our families
Phone / FAX / Email
- 800 . 757 . KEEN (5336)
- www.KeenParts.com
- info@keenparts.com
- 800 . 757 . 5336
- 513 . 353 . 3449 LOCAL PHONE
- 513 . 353 . 3997 FAX
We would love to hear from you!
