Deep Roots
Founded by Brian’s grandfather Frank McCoy in 1927, the company was originally established as McCoy’s Roofing. When ramping up his activity in the family business, Emmett McCoy began observing Wickes, another company that was the industry leader at the time. The Wickes philosophy was to offer materials at a good price while buying directly from manufacturers.
By the mid-1950s, Frank McCoy had moved to California and, just before selling his stake in the business, Emmett expanded McCoy’s to a third location, called McCoy’s Building Supply Center. Emmett would discontinue the roofing segment of the business, and drop the word “center” from the brand name as additional expansion took place.
McCoy’s did not even carry lumber until the mid-1960s. It turned out to be the last major ingredient to a retail business that already offered electrical and plumbing supplies as well as plywood and roofing materials.
Like many dealers that have survived the explosion of big box dealers, McCoy’s caters in particular to repair and remodeling contractors and independent builders. The focus is selling to a smaller population but selling them a greater quantity of products. Still, homeowners make up roughly 25% of the dealer’s customer base, a higher percentage than all but two of the first 50 companies in the ProSales 100.
Such a reliance on consumers often leads dealers to stay competitive by opening on Sunday. McCoy’s doesn’t. In fact, employees’ business cards have an icon in the corner that declares: “We Spend Our Sundays Building Family Values.”
“Even though we could run the business on Sunday, it is so special to give our employees a dependable day off for family, for church, for a recharge,” Brian says. Besides, the fact that three-quarters of the trade comes from pros “lessens the need to open on Sunday even more,” he says.
Be they pro or amateur, city dweller or from farm and ranch country, Brian stresses the personal side of the business.
“We look past the customers as being dollars and cents,” he says. “You have to create an atmosphere where we are doing business with friends, we are serving friends. We have so many regular customers that we want it to be like coming into “Cheers”–and we get to pull that off in a lot of our locations.”
It’s not unusual to find Brian sending a hand-written note to an employee, colleague, or customer. He usually leaves a companywide voicemail every morning with a sales announcement, a method for lifting employee spirits.
“If you are going to be serious about having a people-centric business, you have to model that from the top, and you work that into your day, every day,” Brian says.
