Hogue Talks on California

By C. J. Hogue, Field Manager, West Coast Lumber Trade Extension Bureau, Seattle, Washington

California, as 1r'e all knorv, has been and still is, one of the best customers of the Douglas fir mills represented in the West Coast Lumber Trade Extension Bureau. She has built a finished civilization almost over night. She has needed, and the mills of the north have fur.nished, millions and billions of feet of building material. California, doing things in a hurry, has become a different market with demands and expectations all her own. Her trade with the mills of the north has been a demand-for a service needed -rather than a matter of selling by the mills. Thus, over 50 years, California has sent to the manufacturers of Oregon and Washington for "Oregon Pine" and never have they failed her, either in quantity rvanted or in shipping stock at the prices offered.

Because of this situation, which seemed so satisfactory to both California and to the mills of the north, all trade promotional activities of West Coast mills have either passed up California or they have given but little attention to that state. "California," $re said, "knows as much about our products as we do; let us go somewhere else and educate people on the use of our woods." This has been the policy whether outspoken or not, in the past, born largely out of California's habit of knowing just what she wanted and buying it on her own idea of terms and specifications.

Lately retail lumber dealers in California and mills specializing in that trade have asked the Bureau to go into our sister state to the south and do some trade promotional work for Douglas fir, West Coast hemlock, 'Western red cedar and Sitka spruce. As the Bureau is the servant 6f its member mills and the retail lumber dealers who use their products, what these two groups want we will try to do. Just now we are completing a survey, authorized by our Board of Trustees, of the California lumber marketing situation and when this is completed plans for a comprehensive lumber selling campaign in California rvill be submitted to the Board for approval.

Our study of building and lumber selling conditions in California now under way by Mr. R. T. Titus, Bureau field engineer, is bringing out sorne interesting and important facts regarding the sale of lumber substitutes especially in the territories adjacent to San Francisco and Los Angeles. It is quite likely that these facts will be the basis for any campaigns undertaken by this Bureau and its member mills and that our objective will be to hold for lumber the place it has always held in the esteem of California builders, and to win back any advantages recently rvon by the ardent wooing of lumber substitutes. Anything done by ,the Bureau, at arry time, in California or elsewhere, will be directly in the interests and with the approval of the retail lumber dealers most concerned. We plan, rvhen we go into that territory, to have the unified support and cooperation of retail dealers and insofar as .we can to work in close harmony with the state and regional dealers' associations.

The general and approved plans of the Bureau for this year include educational meetings during the late fall, winter and early spring, to be arranged by the Bureau in many sections of the country. These meetings rvill be called for retail lumber dealers. lumber salesmen. architects and engineers, and later on we expect to have special sessions for contractors, carpenters and others directly concerned with lumber distribution. It is quite likely that a series of these meetings can be held in California early in the fall, provided always that the several associations of retail lumber dealers in that state wish to cooperate in the matter.

Technical and popular information which will aid dealers in the sale of lumber for particular building purposes will be the keynote of these regional meetings. A careful study of the marketing problem throughout the country has convinced us that lumber sales have suffered because dealers, architects, contractors, carpenters and prospective home builders have not had sufficient information about the use of wood. In the past 10 years there has been an enormous amount of technical building information disseminated to the general public, to dealers, architects, engineers, contractors and carpenters and a great part of it has been either anti-lumber or it has been of such a nature as to educate the prospective builder and his advisers away from the use of wood in construction. To overcome this, primarily, is one of the major policies of this Bureau's advertising and field work campaign and these regional meetings will be one of the first steps in bringing the full advantage of the technical information in the possession of the Bureau to the retail tumber dealer.

National advertising was the predominating part of the Bureau's first year, from May 1926, to May, 1927. Field work, by trained engineers and lumber salesmen, chiefly an educational effort looking toward the increased sale of our West Coast woods at the earliest possible moment, will be the outstanding feature of the second year's Program. This drive or campaign will be technical for architects and engineers and practica! for retail lumber dealers. It utill be led by the best men the Bureau can secure and a group of men fully qualified to do this work is now on the staff of this organization. Beginning in September for the next year's preliminary campaign, they will be available for use in California at the request of groups of retail lumber dealers.

The Bureau's work is young yet and we have had much ground to cover in a short time but we can now----on short notice-marshal field staff, advertising and publicity for what we believe will be the most effective work in stimulating local and regional lumber sales. This service, soon to be augmented by the campaign of the National Lumber Manufacturers Association trade promotion campaign, is at the command of dealers in California. The Bureau' anxious to aid in the proper sale of West Coast lumber, will welcome any suggestions that interested retail lumber dealers in California may care to make. We will be with you soon-going strong, we hope and believe-and we want to be prepared and we will need all the cooperation that progressive retail lumber dealers in that state can give tts.