Table of Contents September 2012
Feature
As housing revives, follow these ideas to revive your business so it can handle and profit from increased business.
Fine-tune your operation's performance by adding these innovative metrics.
Housing data expert Jonathan Smoke predicts growth virtually everywhere nationwide.
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Hanley Wood Market Intelligence’s Jonathan Smoke gives advice on which economic indicators deserve the most attention, how economists work, and what to expect through 2014.
Get on better footing with lenders by building relationships with myriad money sources.
Old-school management techniques are some of the best things you can do to advance when housing revives.
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Tighter credit, scaled-back production, and a trucker shortage have put the entire supply chain in limbo.
Consultant Jim Enter offers this formula to help you decide whether your reps are generating sufficient sales.
Temps, '1099' contract workers, part-timers and outsourcing firms all might be better.
Veteran LBMer Dena Cordova makes the case for rebuilding your staff in part by hiring '1099' workers.
Layoffs during the downturn thinned the ranks, soured young people to an LBM career.
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Dealers say there's an active market in seeking out other dealers' sales reps. But there's etiquette to be followed in pursuing those people.
How do you provide personal TLC when you're getting busier? By investing in technology.
Young remodelers are more tech-savvy than their older counterparts. For good or ill, that's going to change how dealers work with this group.
ProWatch
As gas companies explore the Marcellus Shale region, local dealers are working to tap into potential revenues.
A fight over allegedly shoddy construction practices by 84 take on a special tone because of the developer's perceived relationship with 84's president.
Service counts as much or more than quality, survey finds.
Yard Notables
Latest ProSales poll finds dealers' A/R days shrinking a bit in 2012
After years of right-sizing, Builders FirstSource is growing again and worrying about issues related to expansion, two SVPs say.
Dealers share favorite books that helped them change how they work.
The VP for pro business regards the Internet both as a challenge to his company's claims of convenience and an opportunity to speed the shopping experience at his stores.
Hanley Wood's economic analysis unit says recent home sales have been skewed too much to cheaper homes. Expect that to change.
LBM dealer Ray Gaster's controversial signs tell off President Obama.
The U.S. Forest Products Laboratory has opened a plant that breaks down wood fibers and weaves them into fabric that's stronger than Kevlar.
CA lumberyard routinely sends "pre-lien" notices alerting customers it will pursue if they don't pay.
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Stock Building Supply’s former president and CEO joined with the giant dealer’s former COO to create Cornerstone Building Alliance, an investment firm seeking to take majority control of well-run building material distributors, manufacturers, and installers.
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Demand for residential roofing will increase at a 5% compounded annual growth rate between 2011 and 2014, adding $2 billion to the market’s value and push overall demand to $13.6 billion, the Principia group forecasts.
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McCoy’s Building Supply has begun construction on its newest facility, a yard in Taylor, Texas, that will be its first new location since 2007 and the start of what it says will be “a wave of expansion” in coming years.
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Beacon Roofing Supply acquired Contractors Roofing & Supply, a one-location supplier of residential roofing materials based in O’Fallon, Mo.
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There appears to be good reason that home builders’ confidence in the single-family, new-home market rose in August for the fourth consecutive month and is at its highest level since February 2007. A variety of indicators all point to better times ahead.
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A former CNN and CNBC anchor who reports extensively on Generation Y—Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s and who are now entering the job and home-buying market—calls this cohort “a true lost generation” that could cause the country’s next financial bubble to burst.
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CPG International, whose holdings include AZEK Building Products, announced Aug. 27 that it had acquired TimberTech, a subsidiary of the Crane Group.
The month's notable events.
My Yardsticks
Product Monitor
Hot Finds
Ponderosa’s Online Product Configurator puts its millwork visualization software in customers’ hands through a portal on dealers’ websites.
INSUL-WALL from Green-R-Panel Systems lets builders insert insulated panels between their 2x4s or 2x6s.
Huber’s new structural wall sheathing system with continuous foam insulation claims to cut energy consumption while saving time on the jobsite.
Benjamin Moore aims to strike gold with its new line of paints formulated to look like hand-hammered metal.
Swanson’s Savage Folding Jab Saw & Utility Knife can trim trees, cut drywall, and slice through PVC pipe.
Sell Sheet
Build It Right
Editor's Notes
Opinion
Web Only
Other Articles
