COMPETITIVE Intelligence By Carla Waldemar
Go, Kentuckiana!
gurus advise us strivers to learn a new word a day. Well, today is Monday, and my new word is entuc iana. It s the location of PC ome Center, based in New Albany, In. right across the hio River from
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Louisville, y. Get it “I can loo out my window and see the city s yline right now,” declares owner avid Stemler. e wandered into the industry bac in soon after college by signing on at an outfit called PC Paneling
AT PC, David Stemler quickly transitioned from the outfit’s first employee to its owner.
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n Building Products Digest n February 2021
the company s first hire. ne of his initial tas s was helping in the move from a converted bowling alley into a former ice-house down the street, which meant trundling the inventory Armstrong ceilings, plastic moulding and such by hand, for lac of a for lift. he next move, in the mids, was to what once was a rollers ating rin to accommodate the outfit s increased inventory, which now included lumber, windows and doors, moulding and trim. When the company s owner died unexpectedly in , avid, now , was faced with a choice to ma e in a hurry buy the business, or wor for somebody else. Easy decision, save for one fact he young man had no cash. With the help of his former boss s estate and an Andersen Windows distributor, he was able to ta e over the company and all it entailed including the dubious privilege of wor ing -hour wee s . Seven years later, PC had again outgrown its footprint and sought yet-another site. his time, no ice house, no s ating rin avid decided to build from the ground up. Since then, than s to three expansions, it now occupies , s . ft. upon seven acres, and its employee count of has mushroomed to over manning what s become the largest independent, family-owned showroom in entuc iana. But why stop there In , avid purchased a former Stoc Building Supply yard in Sellersburg, In., minutes and a world away. “ ou don t want to do that,” insiders counseled. But he did. Why “Because it was so cheap ” avid laughs. And so lucrative, he might add. he . -acre site anchors a , s . ft. building in what s now entuc iana s biggest locally-owner lumber and hardware Building-Products.com
