In 2007, I was a mid-level sales manager within the company. At that point, I had already worked within the company for 13 years. I will never forget those years because it was an environment where we were “kicking ass” so to speak. Morale was high and “the machine” as we like to call it, was just clicking away. Even to this day, I have never seen our inventory turn over so quickly as compared to the mid 2000s.

We felt, like many others in those days, like we were invincible. In those days, we were growing well year-over-year. My father purchased another distribution yard to help with the growth, as well as to allow us to make larger buys to be able to remain competitive in the booming housing and design build market. Also at the beginning of 2007, we were so confident that we opened up our first location outside of Colorado in Laguna Hills, California. We had an employee who was relocating back home, but we saw an opportunity in the surrounding area for a strong expansion in the decking market and we went for it. The trio we sent out there, as well as my dad and I, were all in agreement, “We’re going to open the doors and just start selling”. It was simple, in those days we almost felt like you could do no wrong. Unfortunately, this couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Back then, ‘Design Build’ represented about 44% of our total revenue (roughly $12 million a year in 2007) and the other 56% was split pretty evenly between small-mid contractor sales and retail clients.

When I say hindsight is 20/20, I mean the indicators for us were there. So, initially from ‘07 to ‘08 we saw the ‘Design Build’ portion of our business drop from 44% to only 37%. This is a statistic that we should have caught, but didn’t. From 2007 to 2008, overall company revenue was down 14%, but of that 14%, 83% of it was directly out of our ‘Design Build’ division. Which makes total sense—by that time, the ski resorts and mountain towns within our region were starting to feel the coming “major recession” and the overall money in the greater system was starting to be siphoned out. It’s simple, people weren’t building second homes because there was no excess wealth within the market.

It’s funny to think about, because the truth is that we thought we had a people problem. We didn’t realize that there was an economic shift on the horizon. All we knew is that certain salespeople over here were down, then we had another salesperson over here that was down. The thought that it was systemic never even landed on the radar. How is this so, you ask? It’s simple—in the history of our sales divisions, outside salespeople who typically serviced the ‘Design Build’ community, typically had a higher turn-over rate than our inside salespeople did. Anyone who has ever done outside sales realizes that it has a few different idiosyncrasies that only certain personality types can thrive in. The other reason I think we missed it had to do with the fact that our other two locations, who focused primarily on inside sales, had barely been affected at that point.

All this to say, I don’t think we even knew there was a greater problem at stake until September or October of 2008 when the whole landscape of the economy seemed to begin to change.

— Shane Hoefer, CEO
Rocky Mountain Forest Products

This was Part Two of Rocky Mountain Forest Product’s The Truth is our Journey series posted by the Lumber Business Journal. You can read Part One here.

The post The Truth is our Journey | Part 2 appeared first on Building Empires Media Group.

The market is the market. It either embraces you or it chews you up and spits you out. Sometimes you have prior notice, sometimes you don’t. And the truth is that many of us experience both scenarios over our career (maybe multiple times).

That’s the singular thing that makes this thing called business so intriguing. The market doesn’t care who you are or where you come from. It doesn’t care who your “daddy” was and where you got your degree. You either are successful or you’re not. Plain and simple. Many of us in this industry know this. So many companies got punched in the mouth in 2008 (some figuratively and some literally). We saw giants fall and some who we never thought would make it, succeed. We saw bankruptcies and new holding companies formed. Massive upheaval.

I started in this industry just after the crash. The funny thing was, I was so young and naive that I didn’t realize we were in a tough space. Our organization, Rocky Mountain Forest Products is a specialty lumber yard based out of the Denver, Colorado. Fortunately, we kept our head above water when this happened. I didn’t know it back then, but the owner and his family were literally walking through this time frame, day-by-day with our bank focusing on making just enough to cover cash flow, pay the bills and take care of the staff that we had.

Every day was a battle and plans we thought we had ironed out failed. We birthed new ideas, some that worked and some that didn’t. We closed full locations in California and opened satellite locations on a skeleton crews in Texas, Colorado, and Oregon. We got creative and overcame.

I bring all of this up, because many in this industry remember the collapse and remember where things were and where we came from. Like I said, in the moment, I really didn’t quite understand what was going on. I was the new front counter guy just trying to scrape by with his young family. The truth is, though, I wouldn’t trade those days for anything.

I got to observe the strategies, processes, risks and rewards that created who we are today. And not as an outsider, but as a young salesman looking to create a career for himself in a family-run organization that fought to stay alive.

My goal with these pieces is to tell the story of our transformation. It’s to let others know about the strategies and tactics we used to revitalize our business and create the Rocky Mountain Forest Products of tomorrow. Yes, we still are a small family-run business, but we’ve grown substantially over the years—both financially and culturally. We have created a management team that will continue to push the envelope and a work family that respects each other in a way that most organizations desire. You’ll get to hear from myself, Darren West (CCO), Shane Hoefer (CEO), and many others.

This is our story and it’s not unique to us. But it is relatable and valuable to uplift our industry, both inside and outside. I hope you will follow along as we outline our successes and failures that have created who we are today.

Taylor Poole
Director of Marketing
Rocky Mountain Forest Products

The post The Truth is our Journey appeared first on Building Empires Media Group.