CENTENNIAL Flashback
The 1950s
In honor of this year’s 100th anniversay of The Merchant
Magazine, as well as the 40th anniversary of sister publication BPD, we look back each month, decade by decade, at the advertisers that have long supported us and are still growing strong to this day. The 1950s was a period of prosperity and innovation, as illustrated by the widening range of products our advertisers highlighted.
• Universal Forest Products predecessor company Far West Fir Sales announced its arrival in The Merchant in October 1955. Far West would grow to six distribution centers by the time it was acquired by UFP in 1987 to serve as the basis for its first western division.
• Perma Products began advertising its stained shingle panels in February of 1950 in The Merchant Magazine, seven years before it would change the company name to that of its sidewall brand: Shakertown.
• Neiman Reed Lumber Co. was launched a few years after the war by Marine buddies Bob Neiman and Bob Reed. During their first 15 years, they primarily concentrated on wholesaling lumber and plywood (as seen in The Merchant in December 1955), but soon expanded into industrials and eventually added a retail chain that in time would expand to more than two dozen locations, including Lumber City stores (now DIY Home Centers) and Patioworld showrooms. The wholesale division also continues strong to this day, catering primarily to industrial lumber users.
• Stimson Lumber, though it had been a prominent lumber firm in Oregon since the 1800s, did not make its first foray into marketing in The Merchant until April 1950, to introduce a revolutionary new composite hardboard product. Called Forest Board, the product consisted of “compressed fiberboard consolidated under heat and pressure,” then infused with and coated with a layer of plastic. The double coating reportedly made boards stronger and more water resistant, for uses such as shower walls. • Galleher, founded in Southern California in 1937, started as a regional distributor of hardwood and premiered in The Merchant in July of 1950 to tout Roc-Wood hardwood composite flooring. Galleher LLC has grown to become one of the nation’s largest flooring distributors and manufacturers, with such brands as Monarch Plank, Reward Flooring, and GemCore.
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• MacBeath Hardwood Co., Berkeley, Ca., advertised in December 1955, one year after founder K.E. MacBeath broke from Alex Gordon, his partner in the Gordon MacBeath Lumber Co. The company eventually expanded from wholesale to retail, milling, drying and transloading, and is now based in Edinburgh, In. • Homasote considers itself the nation’s oldest manufacturer of building products made from recycled materials, dating back to its inception in 1909 as part of the Bermuda Trading Co. It introduced its first-generation Homasote Board for exterior sheathing in 1916. It showed off its then-latest in The Merchant in June 1956. Building-Products.com
