When a building products distributor announces an eighth full-service distribution center, the story is about geography as much as square footage. The new facility, roughly 780,000 square feet, will serve seven states that previously depended on a single hub hundreds of miles away. Delivery times, freight costs, and inventory levels all change when a regional […]
Rapport is a feeling of understanding and trust between people, and in sales it is the difference between a customer who can say yes and one who cannot. People do not do business with people they distrust or who make them uncomfortable. When rapport is high, yes comes easier and no gets harder. The word
Between 2013 and 2018, the U.S. lumber and building material industry grew 1.2 percent to top $95 billion in annual revenue, according to a report from IBIS World. The number of businesses in the market declined by 0.3 percent over the same stretch, which means the growth went to fewer, larger players. Big-box home centers
Every construction company feels the pressure to show up on social media, and most accounts stall after the first month of posts. The building industry runs on relationships, and social platforms are where many of those relationships start. Customers check a feed before they call, employees share project photos with their own networks, and vendors
Home improvement shoppers do their homework before they set foot in a store. The J.D. Power 2019 Home Improvement Retailer Satisfaction Study found that 41 percent of customers research or shop online before making an in-store purchase, and the habit now reaches across every retail category. Fleet managers order work truck parts through web catalogs,
Regional trade associations are where independent lumber and building material retailers get their education, their market data, and much of their political weight. These groups operate on dues, conventions, and staff who rotate between statehouses and warehouse floors. The scale of the job is easy to underestimate: one association may manage another’s operations, relocate offices
In the spring of 2019, a regional lumber company based in Hillsboro, Oregon agreed to acquire the manufacturing plants of a Vancouver, Washington truss fabricator and its sister plant in Sunnyside, Washington. The fabricator had been founded in 1992 by three partners and had grown into a supplier of engineered roof and floor components across
Manufacturing moves are among the biggest decisions a building product company makes. When a door maker relocates its headquarters and production plant from a coastal California city to a Texas metro, the stated reason is usually the cost of doing business, and behind that phrase sit concrete numbers: labor rates, energy prices, taxes, workers’ compensation
When a regional hardware chain closes its doors after nearly nine decades, the real estate does not disappear. Shuttered stores sit in established neighborhoods with parking, loading docks, and retail infrastructure already in place, and competing operators often move in within months to capture the same customer base. One national home improvement chain announced the
Every building product starts at a plant and ends on a jobsite, and the distance between the two is covered by distribution. Manufacturers that want to reach more contractors without building their own warehouses add distributors, and the way those networks expand follows a pattern that repeats across materials, tools, and trim. The rise of
