Changing With the Times

Vital Statistics

• Company: Smitty’s Building Supply
• Headquarters: Alexandria, Va.
• Year founded: 1975
• Number of locations: 5
• Number of employees: 200
• 2006 gross sales: $86 million
• Pro sales percentage: 99%

New Personnel, New Possibilities

COO helps take Smitty’s to the next level.

With a slate of tasks that includes a retrofit of the company’s Alexandria headquarters yard and the successive acquisitions of Shelter Systems, a Marvin Window and Door Showplace, and Fairfax Millwork, as well as getting Smitty’s Building Supply “back to its roots” with a refocus on custom contractors and remodelers, CEO Rick Smith doesn’t put much stock in magic bullets. But if pushed, he will identify a corporate decision to bring on board Don Belt as COO as a key to “bringing Smitty’s to the next level” as the company dukes it out with regional pro dealer powerhouses like Roper Bros. Lumber and TW Perry.

Don Belt Photo: James Kegley “I couldn’t just give blanket advice to people in my position to go hire a COO, though,” he says. “The interaction and the roles between a COO and a CEO [are such that] we have to be so together in our strategic thinking and our planning, and I know that ultimately it is so difficult to put together a team that is cohesive, where everyone is shooting for the same goal.”

Smitty’s goal—to be the pre-eminent one-stop, single-source building materials supplier to contractors in Northern Virginia and the rest of the Washington metro area—isn’t unfamiliar to Belt, who used to sit on the board of directors at TW Perry and also provided product procurement to Smitty’s as a senior vice president for the True Value Co. hardlines co-op. Officially hired as COO on Aug. 9, Belt had been working for Smitty’s in a consultant capacity since January 2006, and his duties have included guiding the company through its acquisition plan as well as spearheading the progress of the Alexandria yard retrofit in partnership with Smitty’s executive vice president Scott Smith and CFO Gary Davis.

Belt sees the Alexandria retrofit, in particular, as indicative of where Smitty’s is headed. Not merely an upgrade of existing capital equipment and facilities, the efforts in Alexandria exemplify how the company can best deliver what Smitty’s gives its customers, Belt says—“not just lumber and building materials, but a promise about the way that Smitty’s is dedicated to doing business.”

That promise is going to include additional services as Smitty’s completes the pending acquisition of $12 million, single-unit Fairfax Millwork, which will provide the company with door-hanging capabilities and a much-increased talent pool for delivering custom millwork packages to high-margin infill contractors. That’s an area where Smitty’s is looking to gain ground lost to its competitors over the past decade.

“Just like the way we readdressed the possibilities of the Alexandria location, the whole company is in a process of continuous improvement, as well,” Belt says. “It’s not Six Sigma or anything, but it is our own internal program of efforts and initiatives.”

While Belt admits that three acquisitions and a retrofit likely have the Smitty’s team maxed out for now, he predicts more action further down the road in 2007 and into 2008. “We’re going to end up with a truss manufacturing facility, and we’ll probably end up with a vinyl window manufacturing facility,” he says. “Our goal is to have a 100% share of our customers’ purchases. How do we get there? You can’t just say it. You have to add capability, and that’s what we are doing as we go forward.”

—Craig Webb