Headquarters: Edison, N.J.
Number of locations: 91
Number of employees: 3,000
2004 gross sales: $1.3 billion
Pro sales percentage: 98 percent
Disappearing Act The seamless integration of Strober’s two recent acquisitions into the corporate fold was an amazing feat accomplished with the power of people.
Now you see them, now you don’t. Like magic, The Strober Organization successfully integrated and assimilated 45 new stores in 2004 in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Through the acquisition of 26 Contractor Yards locations from Lowe’s and 19 Moore’s Lumber and Building Supplies stores, The Strober Organization nearly doubled its yard count and grew sales by an astounding 171 percent. Similar to overcoming logistics challenges at the Brooklyn yard, undertaking that amount of growth and smoothly integrating the two companies into the Strober corporate fold was a team effort—from management to yard staff—that Strober executives say resulted in not only seamless transitions, but content employees on both sides of the aisle.
Of the two acquisitions, The Contractor Yards (TCY) purchase, which closed Feb. 1, 2004, proved the most challenging because TCY operated as part of Lowe’s Corp.’s centralized structure, leaving no option for gradual transition time. “…Two months before the acquisition closed there was no corporate staff at The Contractor Yards, no administrative staff, no back office, no payroll, no accounts payable. It didn’t exist,” says Strober Building Supply president and COO Rich Young, noting that all of the hiring was completed in time for the changeover.
Systems was another significant element requiring attention, says The Strober Organization chairman and CEO Fred Marino. “In the weeks between Nov. 1, 2003, when we signed the contract, and Feb. 1 … we were required to install an entirely new IT system, rewire all of the stores, train some 1,200 people on the utilization of the computer, and do the data conversion so that the inventories were accurate and up to date, [as well as] the customer records, as of the first day that we [converted the] business.”
The hard work paid off: “They closed on Friday on a legacy Lowe’s system that worked out of North Wilkesboro, [N.C.,] and opened up Monday morning on our system,” Young says. “… That whole conversion took place very seamlessly. We didn’t miss a beat—we didn’t miss a shipment, we didn’t miss serving a customer.”
