TURNING UP THE HEAT
Partnership with Red Sox sparks growth for Kenyon International
A 90-year-old Connecticutbased company is making a name for itself in the highly competitive market for cooking grills.
Clinton-based Kenyon International is using a partnership with the Boston Red Sox to raise its profile in a market that is crowded with well-known brands like Weber, Char-Broil, Coleman and Kenmore.
Michael Williams, the company’s vice president of sales, said since Kenyon became the official grill partner of the Red Sox five years ago, sales attributed to the partnership have grown by 35 percent. The partnership that includes the Kenyon First Base Deck, a 4,267-square-foot eating and dining area that is on the second level of historic Fenway Park.
Ironically, none of Kenyon’s grills are used in the space because the company doesn’t have a business relationship with Aramark, which handles the food concessions at Fenway. But the dining space comes with plenty of signage that links Kenyon “to one of the most iconic brands in
baseball and New England,” Williams said.
In addition to the relationship with the Red Sox, company officials believe they have an advantage that the other grill brands don’t: Kenyon’s focus is solely on electric grills, while other brands are spread across multiple fuel sources.
“While there are certainly other companies that make grills, we don’t look externally for rivals because as far as we know, there isn’t a company
that does exactly what we do,” Williams said. “Our biggest rival is ourselves to continue improving what we do to meet the needs of our current and future customers.”
Measuring the market
The arrival of the pandemic in March 2020 resulted in an increase in homes owning some kind of outdoor grill. A Virginia-based trade group, the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association reported that 80 percent of all home owners in the United States and 70 percent of all households in this country own at least a grill or smoker.
The group’s consumer research found that 38 percent of all grill owners had purchased a new grill in the past two years. Of those who purchased in the past year, 27 percent did so because they were cooking at home more due to the pandemic.
“People (are) spending more time at home and changing their overall habits,” said Jack Goldman, president and CEO of the trade group. “We have a clear picture of how much the pastime of grilling has grown, and we’re finding it’s at near record levels.”
Gas grills remain the most popular choice of consumers, followed by those fired by charcoal, according to San Francisco-based Grand View Research.
But ownership of electric grills is expected to have the fastest compound annual growth rate of all three types through 2025. Fact.MR, a Maryland-based market research firm, found in 2020, the residential electric grill market was estimated to be
inclusivity to the 99 percent,” FinTron co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Wilder Rumpf said in a statement. "Our founding mission remains the same. We strive to make personal finance accessible, understandable and doable for the mobile generation. With the support of our investors and new key hires, we can now accelerate our efforts to upgrade our product and meet our ambitious growth objectives.”
FinTron’s investors include Stamford-headquartered Webster Bank and Connecticut Innovations, the state-chartered venture capital organization.
“I have been following the company for over two years and watched them grow and hit all the milestones they presented to me,” Peter Longo, Connecticut Innovations’ senior managing director of investments, said in an email of CI’s $1 million investment in FinTron. “I really liked their approach of building out the educational component of the business and educating the new investors that join their platform. We also liked the demographic of their user base and feel that the traditional financial institutions are not meeting the needs of the under (age) 30, digital-first customers.”
Webster officials said their investment, whose amount they did not disclose, reflected the bank’s commitment to support financial literacy initiatives.
“The larger scale and resources created by our recently completed merger with Sterling Bancorp allows us to participate in investment such as this one in support of economic growth in our communities,” Webster said in a statement. “We were specifically inclined to invest in FinTron’s digital experience as a result of the educational component, which encourages financial literacy for people of all ages and aligns with our core values.”
Last year, FinTron launched its app, with features including investing in fractional shares, budgeting tools and educational resources. Since the launch, the app has gained about 12,000 users.
In addition, FinTron provides financial literacy programs to thousands of high school and college students across the country through FinTronU, a standalone platform that is separate from the app. FinTronU allows students to participate in simulated trading games and financial literacy courses, according to FinTron officials.
Led by 26-year-old Rumpf, FinTron describes itself as one of the youngest founding teams to ever register a broker-dealer. Originally based in Westport, the firm last month moved into its offices at 201 Broad St., in downtown Stamford. It has 13 full-time employees.