When a lumber producer buys a processing and distribution center, the deal reads like a finance story, but it changes the physical flow of materials that builders depend on. In early 2018, Western Forest Products agreed to pay about $9 million for Hampton Lumber’s lumber processing and distribution center in Arlington, Washington. Every stick of […]
Wholesale lumber distribution is consolidating one acquisition at a time. A Midwestern wholesaler with seven distribution centers buys a 115 year old rival with five facilities spread across the East, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, and the Rockies, and the combined company suddenly services 17 states with lumber and building materials. The deal is announced, the
Building material dealers rarely get management training from a university, yet the ones who do come back with a different way of running their businesses. A residential program that brings dealers together for a full week works through pricing, margin, inventory, and leadership with business school professors, then lets the group test those ideas against
A manufacturer that has sold building products under the same name for decades suddenly announces a new one. The logo changes, the packaging changes, and the emails start arriving with unfamiliar letterheads. Rebranding is common in the building products industry, and the reasons behind it matter more than the new name itself. A deck and
The word magazine means two different things in the building trades, and both matter to anyone who works with lumber. On the newsstand side, trade magazines have reported on the industry for more than a century; The Merchant Magazine, a monthly journal for the western lumber industry, has published continuously since 1922. On the tool
When a lumberyard changes hands, the news travels fast through the local building community. A sale in a Colorado farming town saw the longtime owner pass the business to new buyers, who renamed the yard, installed a new manager, and set out to keep the contractor base that had kept it busy for years. The
Independent hardware stores are changing hands at a steady clip, and the deals often come in pairs. A commercial growers supplier in Humboldt County agreed to acquire two independents at once: a 133-year-old home and hardware center in Medford, Oregon, plus a smaller store near McKinleyville, California. The transactions added 45 employees to the payroll
Studs are the vertical framing members inside most walls in North America, and the mills that make them sit close to the timber they consume. When Idaho Forest Group agreed to buy Tricon Timber’s stud mill in St. Regis, Montana, in late 2017, with the deal expected to close by December 1, it illustrated how
Selling lumber, hardware, and building materials is a profession with a skill set of its own, and almost nobody enters it fully trained. A veteran lumber broker once interrupted a young salesman’s eighth practice meeting with a blunt diagnosis: the problem was that his parents had raised a really polite son. Politeness was not the
Contractors who buy through the professional trade channel depend on a short list of joining and sealing products: solvent cements, structural adhesives, and specialty plumbing and roofing products. These materials fuse pipes, bond panels, and seal roof decks in nearly every commercial and residential building. Ownership of the manufacturers behind them changes hands on a
