ProSales Senior Editor Andy Carlo also contributed to this story.

Stock Building Supply confirmed today it has reached agreements to sell inventory and equipment at facilities in six states that it had closed while under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. These operations--in Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, and Wisconsin--speed up a trend that already has seen the revival of Stock facilities in Montana, Illinois and Virginia. And a press report says a one-time Stock yard in Colorado also will get a new owner.

According to a Stock spokesperson, quoting SVP of operations Steve Short, the company has made these deals:

  • Building Industry Partners (BIP), a Dallas-based private equity firm, will take over all of Stock's former locations in Connecticut, New York, and Wisconsin. According to Stock's website, the company operated four sites in Connecticut, seven locations in New York, and 13 in Wisconsin. BIP managing principal Matt Ogden said in an e-mail to ProSales that BIP acquired the facilities in partnership with Bill Imig, Antonio Rossano, and Greg Gaskell, who managed the markets for Stock in those states. According to a report today in a Schenectady, N.Y., newspaper, Stock locations will return to the Bellevue Builders Supply banner. Bellevue sold its business to Stock in 2004.
  • Stock's Sellersburg, Ind., operations were taken over by PC Building Materials of nearby New Albany, Ind. The store now operates under the PC name.
  • Stock's commercial door operation in Charleston, S.C., was taken over by Commonwealth Door & Hardware of Salem, Va., which took the inventory and hired the local employees for a new facility it opened in North Charleston.
  • The commercial door shop in Wilmington, N.C., has been acquired by former owner Jacobi Hardware, also based in Wilmington, and has reopened the shop under the Jacobi name.
  • The facility in Asheville, N.C., was acquired by Brand Vaughan Lumber of Tucker, Ga., which has reopened the store under its name.

In all these cases, what Stock sold was its inventory and equipment; it didn't own any of the land on which the facilities sat, said a spokesman for Raleigh, N.C.-based Stock, America's No. 2 LBM operation. In some cases, the people who had sold their operations to Stock in past years still held onto the land and have leased it to the new acquirers, the spokesman said. Some of these facilities served multiple purposes; for instance, the Sellersburg operation consisted of a lumberyard and an installed sales unit. It wasn't immediately known whether the new owners would continue all of the old activities.

Discussions regarding other transactions are still taking place, the spokesman added. One of them might involve Alamosa, Colo. A Colorado newspaper reported today that the family that owns the LaJara (Colo.) Trading Post had purchased the former Stock property in Alamosa, Colo., and plan to open it around Labor Day as Alamosa Building Supply.

Today's developments follow several other reports of former Stock locations reopening under new names. In all the cases, the facilities are in markets that Stock decided to leave earlier this summer while it was reorganizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy-law protection. Stock announced on July 1 that it had emerged from Chapter 11 and would focus on 19 markets around the country.

Yesterday, ProBuild announced it had set up business at a former Stock facility in Kalispell, Mont. ProBuild is leasing the facility from the yard's former owner, who worked as the general manager when Stock had the facility and now is working in the same capacity for Probuild.

Last week, two former owners of Tidewater Virginia's Kempsville Building Materials, in conjunction with Ohio's Carter Lumber, bought back their largest former location from Stock Building Supply plus a second Stock location in the area. And Seigle's of Illinois has reopened some facilities that it had sold to Stock.