ce etitiv ligen Outside of the box and ahead of the pack

By Carla Waldemar

"We started with a single warehouse, one yard," Al continues. "A couple years into it, we decided to build a truss plant so we could sell both the lumber package and the trusses. That elevated us quite a bit." Next came windows and exterior doors: "You know, if we keep building up, we need our own shop." So the boys bought some used equipment ("We're great at developing in very creative ways") and set up shop.

"We were doing good business in our Nokomis yard and also pulling from Englewood, the next community down the road," Al shares. "We got word of a yard there going out of business and took a look. Too small. But they told us about a vacant truss plant nearby on three-and-a-half acres. Perfect!"

Done deal, but not done yard. That's not how Kimal operates. "We decided we'd build an absolute model yard and really did our homework," he says. "We studied it systematically. We'd add buildings and paving through our profits over the next yew years. We learned early on that adding buildings in Sarasota County was a real nightmare, due to regs. So instead we put in outside racks from Sunbelt. Every time we'd make a profit, we'd buy more of what was needed.

I L Bavry loved his job at Wickes. la,But a funny thing (or not) happened on the way to the gold watch. A changing of the guard occurred, replacing a progressive c.e.o. with, Al moans, "a bean counter: destructive, bottom-line thinking."

Which got Al thinking, too. He and Kim Pavkovich, a fellow manager, tossed around the idea of starting their own small, independent yard. How hard could it be? Three years later, in the early '80s, with property, pro forma, and bank loan in place, the partners opened Kimal Lumber (Kim + Al: Get it?), close to home in Sarasota County, Fl.

Wickes told its people, "He's now the enemy." In contrast, the established independents-Kimal's competition-were quick to offer, "If we can help you...." Story of our industry.

"We made up our minds from day one to target the small, independent builder and remodeler," Bavry notes.

And for over 25 years, that's propelled them. "Today, the national builders are dead in the water, and organizations like Stock and ProBuild are run by accountant-types. The old entrepreneurial spirit is gone."

Well, not quite extinct. Take a look at Kimal: "We built our business one customer at a time, through relationships-selling quality and service: our reputation-totally by word of mouth: An ad budget of zero. Under the radar," says Al. Not bad for a company that saw $60 million in business before the recession hit.

"We're a bunch of mavericks," he declares. That's both the explanation for Kimal's modus operandi and source of its success. "Every time we do something, we look at it from the standpoint not of today, but double or triple down the road. Everything we do in this company looks way into the future: 'This is where we need to be in five. six vears."'

"Then, we did something really smart: By 2001, we'd outgrown our tiny, 700-sq. ft. office and would eventually need showroom space, besides. We found out we could go nine feet taller at very little extra cost, so we built a two-story building, where the ceiling of the ground floor became load-bearing, looking to the future."

Back to the future again. Twelve years ago, Sarasota County funded the now-famous Florida House-the house of the future. "They came to us for input," looking for material to meet the infant 'green' and 'sustainable' mold," Al recounts. "Gee Whizl What we discoveredl"-starting with trusses, formed of "wood from the best-managed southern pine forest in the world;" G-P's Innerseal siding, a forerunner of fiber cement, and TrusJoist Timberstrand, "the beginning of long, layered, strand-engineered wood, totally different from OSB. We talked the Minnesota manufacturer into it, as the wave of the future, and they produced it for us."

The Florida House gave Kimal the green light to move in a "sustainable" direction. "We saw that environmental awareness would develop, not go away, and we're always looking at what's coming down the pike; we do our homework," Al says. "Back then, a dozen years ago, you had to hunt for green products. Today, there are so many that you just pick the best ones. It's not a passing thought."

And that says a lot about Kimal's own thought processes. "We think outside the box," he elaborates. "We're very, very contrarian. We do what other people aren't yet doingand even more today, when the economy is nose-diving."

Evidence: "Before the downturn. we had a plan in place to build a unique showroom, and the easiest thing would have been to discontinue it. But, yet, it would be a very valuable tool to us, so we couldn't not do it.In a horrible economy, you've got to sell yourself out of it," Al attests.

So the show(room) must go on. In designing it, "more important than anything else," Al says, "was thinking about the showrooms you've been in. Sterile. Not real customer-friendly. So, we brainstormed: 'Let's come up with something really different!' When people come through the door, they want to spend time here. We developed it like mini-storefronts, with a cement floor like a boardwalk. It's not just displays, but a great idea center, like pieces of a finished house. People feel at home, not beat up.

"As we talked about building a place for our designers, it got us thinking: Why not build it green? In fact, why not make it the greenest building in Sarasota County?"

That meant using products like GP's breathing drywall, where mold hasn't a chance, Sherman-Williams' zero-VOC paint; dimmable fluorescent lighting, almost unheard of at the time, and floors and roofs of SIT panels in 8-ft. widths, topped by Advantec, with bamboo flooring on top of that.

Homeowners swarm to it. builders bless it. But Kimal, in its customary out-of-box approach, is also using the new facility to partner with an even wider stretch of professionals. The Event Center, as it's called, includes a 12O-seat auditorium with state-of-theart technology, in which workshops and seminars (as well as staff training) are offered on what's good. And green.

"Our Events Center goal was to train our people on green products and systems through workshops and seminars. But we've gone beyond that to offer CEU credits for architects, specifiers and designers, and more-people with whom we've never partnered before, like bankers, insurers, real estate folks, building inspectors. "Use us as your resource for information," we tell them. Since it opened in 2OO6, we've added so many people we've never dealt with before. Partnering," Al insists, "is key."

High time to get out from under the radar and no longer serve as a bestkept secret. "We needed visibility," Al allows. So now the center also offers Dale Carnegie and Leadership Training classes to the trade and ll /I'ANY struggling sellers believe IVlmaster sellers are saying magical things that are getting customers to buy from them. The reality is that most master sellers:

Chamber of Commerce members.

Speaking of reaching out to the community-and A1 didn't speak of this, but Kimal's website does-the company supports a Ronald McDonald House and the local Children's Hospital. Its fundraiser, Building to a Cure, involves a fundraising walk/run, classic car show, and golf tourney. In 2005,$52,200 was raised for charity.

Green is the color of the future, Al is convinced. "I truly believe the [economicl situation won't move back to new construction the way it was before. No! There's a brand-new paradigm ahead of us," driven by the Millenials-young buyers. "They pay attention to energy bills, not mortgage costs. They're very, very serious about protecting the environment. For them, it's not the size of a house as much as the quality put into it. It's absolutely, totally different from everything we've thought about before."

The market in Florida is as tough as anywhere, but Al sees that glass as half-full. "People are not buying new construction -rather, older homes. Then they put $400,000 into modernizing them. It's a circle that never ends, so the potential is endless. Sure, times are tough, but we'll get through it. Not by following a corporate template-stifling! -but through people, like ours, who are passionate, creative." That's Kimal's mantra. Catch the wave!

- A former award-winning LBM trade magafine editor, Carla Waldemar writes frequentLy on the industry. Contact her at cwaldemar@ comcast.net.

(l) Have a crystal-clear idea why they are calling their customers

(2) Use a simple approach

(3) Ask for the order more often!

When I started selling, a great salesman, Jack Greene, taught me a simple opening that at the time seemed too simple, but has proven to be a sure winner:

"Good morning, Mr. Customer, the purpose of my call is...," then present, promote and sell your idea.

Working with struggling salespeople, I find one of the biggest mistakes they make is not knowing why they are calling on the customer. Does this seem unbelievable? Many salespeople call customers with only a vague idea what the call is going to be about, much less what they will sell the customer.

When we enter conversations with no direction, customers sense it. What will happen when a customer senses that we have no direction or purpose?