84 Lumber will open at least 10 new locations in bigger cities and expand its manufacturing capabilities while closing eight stores in smaller markets, the company announced Sept. 8.
Potential growth areas are in Denver; Los Angeles; Raleigh, N.C.; Long Island, N.Y.; and West Palm Beach, Fla., the company said in a news release. Stores that will be closed are in Somerset, Pa.; Sennett, N.Y.; Bell, Ripley, and Mineral Wells, W.Va.; and Maysville, Hazard, and Bardstown, Ky. All their operations will be consolidated into nearby 84 outlets.
The company also will expand its door, millwork, components, and engineered wood products operations. 84 already is a major provider of installed sales and manufacturing services. The company plans to open an engineered wood products center and door shop in Raleigh and a truss and panel plant in Indianapolis.
The planned new stores come on top of openings these past two years in the Atlanta suburb of Winder, Ga.; the Cleveland suburb of Macedonia, Ohio; St. Augustine, Fla.; and Savannah, Ga. The latter two additions basically are reopenings of previously mothballed stores, but this time they also have door shops as well as Kitchen and Bath Design studios.
“As we embark on this expansion and growth we will consolidate eight stores into existing stores strengthening our presence in those markets as well,” 84 Lumber president and owner Maggie Hardy Magerko said in the statement. “By doing this we can better use our resources--money, people, inventory--to invest into these new strategically important markets.
“There were some markets we left at the height of the housing crash that we always felt would come back, and many of them are,” she added. “St. Augustine and Savanah are perfect examples of this; where we had the facility and were able to add services and reopen them much quicker than building from the ground up.”
84 currently ranks fifth on the ProSales 100, with sales in 2014 of $2.32 billion, 95% of it to pros. It operates roughly 250 stores nationwide.
This week's growth-oriented news follows a month in which many of the stories about 84 concerned its troubles in Louisiana. In August, the company promised to stop backing construction bonds in the Pelican State and to go on what amounted to probation for a year because of controversies involving alleged shoddy construction practices. And now Louisiana's State Contractor Board is looking into 84 has paid off all the court judgments that have been rendered against it.
