Powering Profit
Even while reaching out to local businesses and the residential construction supply industry, Curtis Lumber’s own operations and facilities are always constantly evolving to support the pro dealer’s quest for sustained growth and profitability. At Ballston Spa the yard boasts four new Trus-Joist T-sheds, and property is being prepared for an Anderson Window fabrication shop and a wall panel facility to complement Curtis’ existing truss components plant.
Inside the main home center, the company has maintained a steady investment in showrooms to complement the main retail area and provide greater selling power to Curtis sales reps. After the introduction of a bath showroom in 1998, Curtis has annually added additional showroom square footage for a kitchen showroom, a project center, a door and window showroom, and a flooring and staircase showroom that features exotic hardwoods from the company’s Curious Woods division, which has supplied materials for area custom homes built for NFL coach Bill Parcells, 60 Minutes anchor Andy Rooney, and ’70s crooner David Cassidy.
Company wide, Curtis Lumber also continues to update information technology, most recently installing IBM eServers with 2.2-gigabyte power PC chips that communicate with branches via Roadrunner T1 lines, offering faster and more reliable transmission and storage of branch-specific and corporate-wide data. This year, the company will install new phone systems at all locations. “We want all of our employees to have the tools to be creative and profitable,” Curtis says of the continuing investment in operations. “Everyone is involved in the Big P.”
As the company keeps moving, Jay Curtis looks out to the value-added age of pro sales and suggests that the best future would include a return to the entrepreneurial spirit that has historically characterized the industry. From component manufacturing to technology and consolidation, Curtis argues that dealers need to probe every new idea while remembering that success is never a magic bullet. “Ours is still a very fundamental business—it is a matter of being able to accurately read the needs of your market and satisfying them,” he says. “But you have to be willing to look forward a little bit and pay attention to how your market is changing, if it is changing, and what the new needs are every day. Don’t be afraid to cut away the old, and never discount any new idea out of hand. I’m probably not going to start a chain of drugstores, but who knows? I don’t know where the line is but I know there’s a line out there somewhere, and I won’t find it if I don’t keep pushing forward.”
Vital Statistics
- Company: Curtis Lumber
- Year founded: 1890
- Headquarters: Ballston Spa, N.Y.
- Number of locations: 11
- Number of employees: 440
- 2004 gross sales: $120 million
- Pro sales percentage: 66 percent
(Note: stats are not inclusive of Webb and Sons acquisition)
