Hela Pela
Buyer / Bruce Bauer Lumber & Supply / Mountain View, Calif.
Drill bits and joist hangers aren’t clothes or shoes, but inveterate shopper Hela Pela pretends they are. “They’re building materials, but at least I’m shopping, right?,” says Pela, who flips through catalogs like fashion magazines and trains her vendors’ reps to know her store’s style; cutting-edge, green, and a little spicy. Pela’s fireball personality leads her to love the days she defines as “chaotic madness.”
Green is one of those things that’s a freight train waiting to happen, and if you’re not on board, then you’re missing out on the big bucks. The contractors have no choice but to get on board because the consumers are now educated; in fact, they’re more educated than the contractors sometimes. I believe it’s my responsibility to make my consumers aware there are products out there that are safe for your children. There is a lot of greenwashing, but you just have to be particular and look at the bottom line after you’ve done your research.
I’m not going to drop a product just because I’m pissed off at the vendor. There are a lot of factors to consider: Is it still up to code? Has it been merchandised correctly? Do we need to move it to a visible area? Is price a factor? Have we educated our staff on it so they can sell it to our customers? Do our customers know the application of the product? I’ve dropped some products and it was all due to slow movement.
Prior to two years ago, I was selling Simpson Strong-Tie A35s off the shelf. I would always keep two or three boxes in the back. Now it’s gotten to the point where I’ll not even keep one because I can have my vendor come here three times a week, so I just keep whatever is on the shelf now. Over the course of two years, I’m much more careful on what I buy depending on how many times a particular product turns.
Every day is an adventure. I can help out customers, I can approve invoices, place orders, work with different sales reps. It’s a challenge and I love it!
My favorite product at the moment is Penofin’s Verde line. It’s a beautiful thing–in one gallon of Verde you can have coverage of 500 square feet instead of the regular 300 square feet. It’s a vegetable-ester-oil-based product with no VOCs. There are no smells or toxins to it whatsoever. It’s safe for children, it’s safe for vegetables, you can use it on your planter box, on your deck, on your fence, interior, and exterior. The great thing about it is the vendor who helps bring this product in. She is like a ball of fire, so our personalities totally click.
Rob Jolliff
Commodity Buyer and Inventory Manager / Bender Lumber / Bloomington, Ind.
Rob Jolliff wears more than one hat at Bender Lumber. He says serving as both a commodity buyer and inventory manager gives him a better understanding of the products he needs and how much to buy. A self-described analytical, numbers-type person, Jolliff brings nine years of experience as a purchaser and 14 years of experience in purchasing to the table every time he sits down with a supplier rep.
A couple of things have changed. One, the competition out there is a lot stiffer than it used to be. You have everybody fighting for every sale because there are not as many jobs as there used to be. We have to do everything we can to buy as sharp as we can and put a little pressure on the vendors to give us their best deal all the time.
We shop it a little more and try to make sure we get the absolute best price out there, because you never know what your competition is going to be getting. [The economy] has also made us expand into some other categories we didn’t used to have before, to make up for the lost sales of the building materials. We’re going out and researching and buying other programs and products now. This past year, we opened a separate location in a market where we already had a lumberyard, but the location was actually a work wear store. They sell Carhartt, that kind of thing, because it fits hand in hand with our type of customer. And we are actually bringing some of that product into the other stores too. Just a small presentation of that, though. If customers are too far away to get to the work wear store, we made it so they can go and shop online. They can still use their Bender Lumber charge card and we can mail the product to them.
If we bring in something new, we always want to have a guaranteed buyback in case something doesn’t work out for us. We’re not afraid to go in and try new products and new categories, but we don’t want to be stuck with a product if it doesn’t work. Also, to help us not affect our cash flow as much, we like having dating on products that tell us when we have to pay for it. We also want a lot of vendor support in promoting the product, such as contractor events, going out and making sales calls with our salespeople on our contractors.
Our most popular product in volume obviously has been OSB panels. It’s also a highly competitive product, which makes it a pain sometimes, too, but it’s one were we have to stay on top of the market more than anything. Right now it’s predominantly Weyerhaeuser. We’ve really built that brand up over the last few years, since before I was in this position. They used to have a distribution center in Louisville before they closed it a few years ago, which is right in our backyard, so we have a good relationship with them and they really helped us build the brand up. Now that’s what everyone thinks of in our market when they think of OSB.
