This Funny Lumber Business

By Jack Dionne

Have had some fine letters and oral compliments from retailers of lumber concerning the leading editorial last issue in which we discussed how the retail lumberman happened to change from a woo'den raw material man to a modern building merchant.

And I had one leltter frorn a good mill friend, objecting to my for-the-thousandth-time-objection to the theory that the trouble with the lumber business is "over-production". He says there are "too many mills, with too much production, too much effort to force lumbcr on the market", etc., and that therefore it MUST BE over-production.

I am a great fellow for believing that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In other words, it is results that count. For many years the lumber consumption has been declining per capita in this country, where, with 7 per cent of the world's population, we manufacture more tlan 50 per cent of its lumber. Look at those figures, and you naturally exclaim-"We MUST be making too much lumber."

But while lumber has been declining, its competitive building materials have all been increasing, every one of thern Lumber just hasn't kept up, that's all, Steel, brick, cement, tile, asphalt, asbestos, gypsufi\ etc,, all have increased mightily.

whv?

Simple enouglr. Notice their contrasted methods. When one of those other commodities want to increase their business, they go and try to create a demand for their materials nr'here there was non€ before, mostly by educational and service effort.

What does a mill do when it wants an increased order file? You know. It cuts the price. Does that create anything? It does NOT. Who does it hurt? Just the other lumber competitors. Does it hurt the "substitutes?" It does NOT. The difference seems to be that when the other fellow goes out after business, he makes new business. When the lumberman gocs out after business he creates nothing additional; simply seeks to wrest from the grasp of th,e other fellow the po,tential order.

The other building materials-those that are increising in their per capita consumption-spend thirty times as much money as does the lumber manufacturing industry, in their efforts at trade extension.. And all thoughtful students of merchandising know that there can be no doubt of the fact that inferior products can be sold in preference to superior ones, any time, any where, in any business, if the sales effort is far superior.

"My product is better, but they are buying the other", has come to be looked upon as the cry of the weakling. In business as in poker, it is every man's duty to protect his own hand.

THERE ISN'T A "SUBSTITUTE'' MANUFACTURER IN THE COUNTRY WHO DOES NOT ACTUALLY CREATE THE MARKET HIS PRODUCT ENJOYS.

BUT THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF MILLS AND BILLIONS OF PRODUCTION OF LUMBER WHERE THERE IS ACTUALLY NO MARKET CREATIVE EFFORT.

That's the big, and mighty difference. That's why lumber slips in per capita consumption, and the other comrnodities increase.

When a "substitute" is offered for sale, it is at a fixed price. The dealer doesn't state in reply what he is willing to pay. There ain't no such animal. No one ever heard of a "substitute" cornplaining of "ov'er-production"'; and as for selling at prices "less than production cost", which we hear of so much in the lumber business, I feel sure that if a "substitute" manufacturer ever made such an admission concerning his own business he would be dragged forcibly into a mental examination.

No, friends, it won't do! This old "over-production" ghost never really walked. Like all ghosts, it existed only in imagination.

Just so long as a tremendous volume of lumber goes crashing through the saws, and out into the world without a single selling thought behind thenr, we will have such times as we are still having in most of the lumber manrdacturing industry.

But that "over-production" charge would be promptly thrown out of any inteUigent court. Thc EFFECT is over-production, all right. But not the cause. When the mills all get to meeting their competition, like the dealer learned to meet the mail-order bugaboo-by selling buildings, and plans, and functions, and USES rather than just raw inaterial-then the "over-production" ghost will lay, and we will discover that he nev€r was.