Selling lumber to yards like yours

ll fione AND MoRE. we American IYlconsumers are choosing to support the indie entrepreneurs of our region to supply our needs and wants: the local diner, not the franchise; the guy with the corner store who doesn't get his marching orders from Arkansas. Likewise, your own customers know and trust and value Your operation: the contractors You've formed relationships with and maybe their homebuilding clients, too, who wander through your showroom.

But what about the vendor who supplies you with your most imPortant building product? The wholesaler whose lumber can make or break your reputation? For some of you-at least those lucky enough to own a building center in Louisiana-that's an opportunity to shop locally, too, and get the kind of hands-on, personal and attentive service a computer screen or fax machine can never deliver.

This column usually salutes an independent dealer who's doing something you can learn from. This month, we'll instead chat with just such a wholesaler, to showcase relationships and customer service tracing back in that direction.

J.E.B. Ransone Lumber Co. was launched by John Ransone, grandfather of third-generation present owner, John Ransone III. The elder John was a Baltimore boy whose father also had sold lumber to retail dealers. After his son graduated from college in 1945, John's father handed him one piece of valuable advice: "Go down to New Orleans. The South has a lot of pine."

His son, John III-"our" Johnsigned on to his dad's Louisiana venture in l9'72,but not without a little prod. "I'd tried other things," he recalls, "but finally my father said, 'How long can you live on a Psychic income?"'Reality made its case. Actually, his career path had been predetermined long before, if onlY John had known it: "It was osmosis. All my life I'd heard my dad talk and visit with his customers-at home, at the plant. He was a gregarious man, sincerely loved people. So today I'm in the third generation and dealing with third- and fourth-generation owners of those same lumberyards the company sold to. I've matured," he allows with one of his trademark smooth-as-honey laughs. "It was a good fit."

And he's seen, and orchestrated, important changes along the waY. "When I'd come in,in 1972, dealers might have had to wait six months for product. But they were asking for material right here, in place, and of good quality. So, in 1979, we built our first warehouse: We changed our selling habits. Since then, we've doubled our size and added another warehouse."

Product mix has evolved, as well. "We specialized in redwood, but as the years went on, there was a reduced amount available to us, so, we diversified to upper grades of finished lumber. For the last 10 years," John says, "we've been imPorting pine and upper-grade finished paulownia from China-plantationgrown, fingerjointed, preprimed. It sells for less than the southern pine in our own backyard," he laces his laugh with a touch of irony. "It's been a staple of our inventory line, one of our

Weathering a storm can be a beautiful thing.