North Cal Wood Products
By Carla Waldemar
Reclaimed timbers from Palco's Scotia, Ca., mill
This isn’t the story of a third-generation family firm where today’s top dogs grew up sweeping sawdust. Yet, had these fellows been born in the shadow of a lumberyard, it well could be. It’s the story of love at first sight.
Tony Fernandez, director of sales & marketing of North Cal Wood Products, based in the Bay Area town of Ukiah, Ca., has worked here “on and off, for 15 years. I was friends with the owner and into redwood myself—hot tubs, furniture. He noticed I loved wood and had a lumber mill, so we hooked up together.”
Mike Lacy, vice president of marketing, signed on with North Cal a year ago, leaving—true story, I swear—a career as a professional drummer performing with the Andy Williams show in Branson, Mo. “I’ve always been involved with wood—even underwater wood. I’d invested money and networked in the lumber business,” Mike spins the tale. Today, he’s recounting the story of North Cal like someone who’s just got religion. Which he has.
The outfit, launched in 1985, established its reputation with redwood, straight up. But, early on, one of its major successes was that the owner snagged North Cal as the exclusive supplier of redwood garden products for Home Depot.
“That coup helped get us started with a very good product and led us to play an important role here on the West Coast,” says Mike. “Competi-tion, naturally, arose. We’d forged the path, but it was no longer as profitable as it once was. So, in 2004, we became involved with a deconstruction project in Scotia.”
Another right-time, right-place serendipity. “The world’s largest redwood sawmill, Pacific Lumber Co., had gone bankrupt and lost their mill. After deconstructing five million bd. ft., word got out and we got a contract for the redwood and delivery from Stanford University—another coup!
We had great relationships with all the sawmills. That provided us with inventory to start recycling in order to supply green products”—redwood, doug fir, western red cedar and more, all the buzz among California’s forward companies with sustainability as their byword. Now North Cal supplies flooring, siding, decking, lumber, custom trim, slabs and millwork. Word of mouth kicked in and soon attracted high-end clients in the Bay Area, including eco-forward corporations such as Facebook. Twitter, Land’s End, and Whole Foods. (Not to mention wealthy Hollywood tycoons building their new homes.)
“We developed resources to manage the chain of custody—we trained ourselves and financed it—so we can act as both source and distributor to our customers. We managed it all. (And here’s an interesting sidelight,” Mike adds. “Our facility is located on three acres where Georgia Pacific once had a chemical plant. We did all the environmental abatement—a lot out of pocket—to change it from toxic to green. It’s a model in the reclaimed industry,” he rightly brags.)
Back on message, “We can do A to Z,” he explains. “Tear it down, truck it out, remove the toxics like lead and paint, remill it, then take it to our customers.”
And how do you come up with the used wood to recycle, Mike? Again, the power of word of mouth. “Our reputation leads them to us,” he maintains.
Until the recession, anyway. “When it hit, it led to a lot of our competition going out of business. The recession slammed us, too, like everyone else: layoffs, scaling back operations. What happened was, quite a bit of consolidation among the competition. At our peak, back in the Home Depot days, we did $30 million a year. The recession knocked us back to $2 to $3 million. But today, we’re getting incredibly strong again. We’re back into garden products in a big way, signing with a national big box with 250 units in California alone—redwood lattice panels. Plus, independent dealers and homeowners are buying our products on the web. Sure, we’re in the commodity business, too, but our bread and butter is reclaimed wood,” Mike underscores, and points us to the amazing length and breadth of North Cal’s portfolio detailed on its website. (See photos of work for clients at www.northcal.com.)
Lots of dealers can sell wood well, but recycled wood adds another (bad pun alert) dimension. To sell it, customers get romanced with the sizzle as well as the steak. “The story of wood,” Mike calls it. “We know where each piece comes from, and it helps marketing it. It also”—time out for a ta-da!—“enables us to demand premium prices—NOT commodity prices: The margins are much higher!”
Asked about the architectural style prominent among the corporations and individuals seeking this wood with history, Mike calls it Organic Modernism. “That’s the trend we see—old wood again, with natural elements, like stone, and steel for the industrial look.
“Most of our clients come from the Bay Area of California, but the list is truly national. Our second-highest arena is New York. The website we just launched, onlinelumberstore.com, takes us all over the country. It beats any big-box selection, and without having to travel to the store. Online, you can check multiple options—grade, sandblast, species—and all without a car or phone call or fax, which,” he adds, “reduces the carbon footprint.
“Other wood goes from forest to manufacturer, then distributor, then a home center and then to its customers. Here, it’s shipped direct. Saves time and energy.”
Adds Tony, “The idea is, the independent contractor who’s at a jobsite in Wisconsin, trying to find studs or framing or flooring or siding can get online on his laptop or smart phone, check our inventory, read a product review, and place an order. With just a few clicks, he can get it shipped directly to the jobsite.”
About that vanguard website: “We launched it in 2009, literally the first to do what we’re doing. Granted, people aren’t used to shopping online for lumber, so the business started slowly, but it’s the wave of the future,” he’s convinced. “So we just redesigned our website, making it more search-friendly. And we’re utilizing social media, like Facebook and Twitter.
“It’s an online world. I foresee there’ll be a time when most of the company’s customers will shop and order online. It’s the wave of the future,” Mike is certain. “In the face of the recession, we created this as a way to grow, and it’s been growing since 2009. We’ve seen traffic triple, and it has earned us more revenue by June this year than all last year. It’ is not a big business right now, but customers are reacting very favorably, and it’s growing.”
Yes, but. Once before, North Cal led the way, only to have to bow to competition.
Rebuts Mike, “Sure, a lot of mills say having such a website would definitely be of service, but having a 4,000-product integration, such as ours, on a site would be technically very hard to duplicate. The sweet spot is, we don’t have to broker any of this. We are both manufacturer, distributor and end-seller: no middle men. And in California, we deliver it with our own trucks.
“Reclaimed wood is where we stand out. And what we’ve found there is most interesting: It’s in high demand on the East Coast, where it’s not readily available, so many high-end, affluent clients from there order from us and have it shipped from California (never mind their freight price).”
Adds Tony, “We expect business to grow further as we emphasize our You Click, We Ship It campaign.”
Looks like there’s no going back to Andy Williams.
