THINKING Ahead By Steven Rustja
What doesn’t kill your business makes it stronger AWLA had just wrapped up its Leadership Summit early last March when the significance of the COVID19 outbreak slammed home. Attendees had no idea then, but that would be the last in-person industry gathering for the foreseeable future. The mood in Palm Desert, Ca., was light-hearted, but the return trip from the event was much more solemn. Many of us arrived home to empty store shelves and talk of lockdowns, not knowing when we’d be able to buy our next roll of toilet paper—let alone how our businesses would fare in the emerging public health crisis. The first line of defense at Weston Forest, and no doubt many other firms, was to preserve cash and protect the business. Not knowing what the future held, we scaled back purchases, unloaded existing inventory, and collected on receivables… then waited to see what was coming next. It was good news—at least for our industry: Weston and its peers were fortunate to be among the businesses labeled as “essential.” We never shut down, even for a day. While the pandemic kept some pockets of the economy in a stranglehold, lumber was one area that actually flourished in the so-called “K” recovery that followed. In fact, we were busier than ever! Construction was booming. People had both the time and—thanks to cash stimulus payments and low interest rates—the money to build, renovate, and remodel in 2020. The lumber industry, in turn, clocked one of its best performances on record. While we were grateful to have a life preserver in the middle of the “storm,” the executive team at Weston also recognized an opportunity to systematically improve our company and make it even better and stronger than before.
N
Necessity Breeds Invention
While Weston thankfully has been able to keep the doors open and the lights on during the pandemic, it was clear from the start of the crisis that operations couldn’t continue on as before. The world was changed, so we had
38
n
The Merchant Magazine n
April 2021
to change how we conducted business, too—quite quickly and quite radically. The new realities of operating during the COVID-19 crisis meant redesigning all of our systems: from the way the order system works to the way we hold meetings down to the way the finance team handles invoice processing when working from house. As it were, this need to reinvent the wheel was the push our company needed to implement processes and technologies that were already on our corporate “to-do” list but that hadn’t seen any real momentum up until that point. Starting with Zoom.
Zoom Boom
From a hardware perspective, Weston was ready for Zoom pre-crisis. The company renovated our office space a couple of years ago. Some of the inspiration came from NAWLA—which was already well-versed in the virtual meetings platform, although many people had never even heard of it. Because we work closely with the organization, a handful of our offices were already set up for Zoom. We added the cameras to all executive offices as part of the
Building-Products.com
