Lumber Institute Activitres

By Kenneth Smith Secretary-Manager' Lumber and Allied Products Institute of Southetn California

Excetpts from an Address delivered at the Meeting of the Lumber and Allied Products Institute of Southern California, at Los Angeles, April7, t93l

If I were obliged to pick out the one thing that is of most importance to 1'ou for the long fttture I rvould unhesitatingly emphasize the recommendation of Mr. Burnaby that youleach yourselves to create nerv business by group advertising and group trade promotion activities.

The greatest u'eakuess of your business (taken as a 'r,r'hole) is that you do not sell anytl-ring. You dellen<l upon the contractor ancl the speculative builder to sell your proclucts and then r'ou fight one auother for tl-re business tl'rey create. Yott cry a lot about the contractor putting the'price on )'our merchandise but so long as he sells it for you he has the u'hip hand and cau and rvill allsolutell' rlrn your business except lvhen yott vvork tclgether closely enough to keep him from n'hip-sarving yott.

The contractor has not alrvays lteen yottr salesman aud tl-rere will come a day u'hen you rvill again sell your olvn products and the contractor rvill resume his normal funclion. Ten years frorn today a g'reat many of you rvill be selling homes direct to the consllmer and the contractor n'ill be onlv incidental to yottr business instead of .vour chief reliance for volume. In trventy years the lumber business all over this country rvill by evolution have become purveyors of the nation's homes.

This change is already here for some of you, particularll' in the smaller commttnitr'. It is an easier transition for the smaller dealer in the rt.rtillet community than for the large citv dealer rvho has chased excavations so many years that he-has lost touch rvitl-r the real needs of the buying public and ceased to cater to anyone except the contractor or his purchasing agent. His entire staff in firost cases is composed of men rvho have Irever itr their lives actually sold anything and rvho 'rvill naturally fight any pl'oposal rvhich means that they rvill l-rave to get out of their accustomed groove. Nevertheless the change is on the rvay and you will either get in step rvith it or drop back to the side lines arrd rvatch the parade go by.

One of these fine days you are going to be kicked in the pants by Sears-Roebuck & Company, and after swearing at them for about a vear you will discover that you can match their operation and make more rnoney cloing it than you had been making rvarehousing lumber for contractors. You could learn, of cotlrse, from the experience of the dealers in Nerv Jersey, in Chicago,.in practically all of Illinois and Indiana, in St. Louis, but you probably won't.

In Collinsville. for instance, the dealers after losing onethird to one-half their business to Sears Roebuck, joined together to sell homes to the consumer and by.advertising, and. of course, delivering rvhat they promised, got their business back. In Chicago some 150 dealers aclvertise in the daily papers, run a Bureau where the public can find out anything from horv to install a shoe shelf to how to finance an office building, and are even so modern that they go on the air once a week.

St. Louis is probably carrying on the most sensible and constructive joint lumber yard program in the-couutry in spite of the fact that some of the big boys therc fight among tfremselves. They got the Better Business Bureau of St. l-ouis to organize a Construction Industries Division into rvhich they lventually pulled the leaders of every bra-nch of the industry and have issued "Good Practice Specifications" on r,vhich they put in a solid year of work t'hich are not only educating the consumer lrttt elevatins !h9 rvhole constiuction industry. They appear to have ended the reign of the jerry builder in St. Lonis'

We catr do these same things for ourselr'es here once we lift our eyes and see a picture of ourselves as merchauts selling security, comfort, and pleasure in the form of better homes, better apartments, better stores instead of rvarehousemen for contractors.

We have sat idly by and let jerry builders plus the special assessment evil plus extortionate second trust deed financing rvreck our normal market for individual home building by normal Americans and we could lvield a tremendous influence to correct this situation if we would organize for that purpose, coltle out in the open and advertise our \\rares' not for u'hat they are to us-2x4s and sash-but for u'hat they are to the buyer-home, comfort, security, pleasure. pride of olvnership.

You can even do it as an individual but not so successfully as can a group. You can make more money ringing doorbells than you can chasing excavations or building permits. A Chicago yard adcled 277 new accounts last year by creative selling from a direct mail campaign to 2000 prospects; a Buffalo yard removed their bttsiness from the competitive field and doubled volttme; National Gypsum increased their orvn and the business of their dealers lo/o in l93O when volume rvas ofr 3O/o; one retail salesman in a farm community in Oregon, popularly supposed to be broke, sold over $10,000 in 3 months in a cold canvass. and practically every dollar of it 'ivas created by his visits; .a man in Iorva called on 1462 farmers and kept his yard busy all rvinter just by as he puts it "u'earing out less pants and more shoe leather"; another dealer east of the l\{ississippi last year made 2O7o net on his capital pulling door bells and said "lve sell them the lumber they need before thev are induced to spend their money for cars or radios."

Fear and laziness are the onlv things to keep any yard from similar success. I have seen a list of 30O suggested improvements to homes requiring lumber and an additional listof 400 more wood using suggestions applicable to farms. Your business is just like a rvheelbarrorv. It rvill stand right where it is unless you pick it up and push it along.

The greatest thing yoir can do for your business right norv is to push grade-marked lumber. Follow Harry Lake's sugg'estion and furnish grade-marked lumber whether it is called for or not.

Up-graded No. 3 will never be bought again by a contractor who has built one job of straight grade No. 2 and No. 1. That you can do as an individual. As a group, u'e can advertise it to the trade, guarantee W.C.L.A. grademarking jointly with the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, possibly issue certificates, and rvork to get all money lenders to specify grade-marked lumber and souncl construction.

It costs you a little more money to serve the trade rvith grade-marked lumber but not a fraction of what it rvould cost you and has cost you in the past to meet the price competition of dealers who sell up-graded No. 3.

I might g'o on at any length to point out the danger of a weakening morale, of believing contractors' lies and salesmen's irnaginings in preferen,ce to a fellow owner's statement and the necessity for continuing faith and a stiff backbone but I could not possibly say it as well or pointedlv as Calvin Coolidge put it in an eclitorial last December rvhich Mr. Lynch calldd to my attention at the time. "l{uman relationships," said Mr. Coolidge, "that are of any value rest on faith and confidence. When those disappeai, tl-re rvhole fabric of governmental, social ar.rcl business intercourse clisappears rvith them."

This Institute, Gentlernen, is nothing 'rvhatever except your faith ancl confidence ancl the faith and conficler.ce bf your neighbor that you both are going to play the game as \{r. Coolidge so ably stated itif 1'ou let-this faith- ancl confidence clisappear I'our Institrrte rvill disappear with it.

Vancouver Island Loggers Seek American Market

Efforts are being made. accorcling to the local tracle, to have the Provincial Government lift temporarily the ex- port tax _on Crorvn lancl logs as loggers -claim an emerg'ency exists, states a report from Vicl Consul Robert X4. Nervcomb at Victoria and made public by the Lumber Division of the Department of Commerce..-Providing the export tax_ is lifted, Vancouver logging camps expect to increase the shipment of logs to nearby Ameriian puget Sound polnts.

Further. the timber industry also seeks a reduction in timber royalties which are the-taxes collected bv the pror-ince on timber .cut on Cror,vn lancls. A reduction is said to be necessary to meet the exigencies of the present unerlployment situation.

Vancouver Island logging interests report that 50 per cent of the logging camps and mills are ilosed ancl unGss steps are taken to bring relief. more camps and mills mav be forced to shut dou'n, as most of them are now operat- ing at a loss.

E. D. KINGSLEY VISITS CALIFORNIA

^ E. .D. Kingsley, president of the West Oregon l,umber Co., Linnton, Oregon, left for home April 9 aJter a short visit to San Francisco.

While in San Francisco Mr. Kingsley made his headquart€rs at the Wendling-Nathan C-ompany's office. He found time to take in a couple of basebill games, in company with Duke Euphrat and Roy Hills. One of these was the opening game of the season between the portland Beavers and San Francisco Seals at the new million dollar stadium.