Three years ago, Sterritt Lumber took the plunge and began investing a heavy portion of their inventory dollars in FSC lumber and plywood.
Right now, that’s looking like a pretty smart move.
The F. D. Sterritt Lumber Company was founded in Massachusetts in 1841, and it’s been a family run business ever since. As recently as the 1980s, the company had been based in Cambridge, MA, but MIT bought the property for its own expansion needs and moved the yard to nearby Watertown. Sterritt currently operates two yards in the Boston area: the main distribution yard is about 3 acres, and their retail yard is about 1 acre.
Current Vice President Jack Mackin is the third generation of his family to take a management role with the company. In an era where huge lumberyards have made a strong impression in some segments of the construction industry, Mackin wanted to carve out a fresh niche for Sterritt. So 3 years ago, the company began maintaining an active stock of FSC lumber.
“We started getting phone calls from the big general contractors doing work at Harvard, MIT, and the other colleges around here with requests for FSC lumber,” recalls Clayton Schuller, the company’s Business Development manager. “Of course, at the time we had no idea what that was,” he laughed, “and so I took over and started really looking into what FSC meant, how to get the material, how it fit into LEED, etcetera.”
At first, Sterritt saw a rather small demand for FSC, but Mackin and Schuller had decided this was a move they wanted to take. “Now we’re starting to see it pay off,” said Schuller. “Since we’ve been doing this for a few years, we’re well ahead of any competitors we might have in terms of materials. And when people think of FSC lumber in this area they actually think of us."
According to Schuller, investing a big chunk of inventory dollars in certified wood was worrisome for the first year or two. “It’s really not a good idea to try this unless you have the stomach for it,” he said. “Unless you’re willing to bring the material in and let it sit for a while as you develop the market for it, you should probably hold off. In terms of profitability, it didn’t amount to anything for the first two years.”
Fortunately, Schuller has been willing to ‘develop the market.’ He hits the street regularly to talk with developers, builders, architects, and end-users. “We’re frequently at job sites to make suggestions, give ideas, and serve as a consultant,” he said. “We’re not the big shop. We like to deal directly with the people we work with,” he stated.
That also involves serving on, and sometimes chairing, committees such as the Sustainability Building Committee of The Builders Association of Greater Boston (BAGB), the 50+ New England Housing Council, and Build Green Massachusetts. He plans to serve on the new Sustainable Building Committee for ABC. Schuller speaks at a variety of public and association events and has been a recurring spokesman for green building in the Boston media.
It’s all about getting the word out. “When it comes to green building, you need to be more than simply a supplier that has the material; you need to educate builders in what they can do,” said Schuller.
Architects need education as well, he has found… even when they know about green building. “Some firms have a tendency to spec material that sounds great – they read about it on the internet – but it isn’t really available, or they may not understand what’s involved in actually using it,” Schuller noted. So he tries to educate architects on what kind of real-world materials they can spec. As a result, he said, “We’re seeing plans where architects are actually specing us as the lumberyard for FSC material.”
Sterritt’s primary customers tend to be large general contractors who specialize in commercial projects, and over the years Sterritt has played a role in some of the biggest jobs in town, such as Boston’s Big Dig. More recently, their live FSC inventory has put Schuller in conversations with Turner Construction, which is developing a 22 acre site at Harvard. “On a project like that, it’s interesting to sit down with their LEED consultants and determine what they are doing and how we can help them out,” he said. “For me, that’s the most fascinating part; learning what other people are doing that I don’t yet know about.”
Massachusetts passed legislation this year requiring any new commercial construction of over 50,000 square feet to be LEED certifiable. “The goal is to see that commercial projects think green from the initial planning process,” Schuller reports. “That’s why the market has taken off here. It’s definitely based on the commercial side, definitely driven by the colleges pushing for green product.”
Sterritt has also seen interest on the residential and consumer side. “We tend to focus on the custom homebuilders. We’ve worked with homes that are as big as 20,000 square feet, and we try to incorporate and suggest using green building materials, and for jobs like that they’re very open to it,” Schuller observed. “I’ve heard some builders ask, ‘Why do I have to know about these things, why do I have to deal with it?’ and my first response is, ‘Because you’re going to be asked about it.’ This is a 100% consumer driven market on the residential side. You’re going to have to know about it because people will be asking about it and you will need to know what’s involved,” he insists.
Schuller hasn’t seen a completed LEED certified home yet, although he has worked on projects currently under construction. He’s also involved with helping the BAGB, a local affiliate of the National Association of Home Builders, develop their own green building program.
Many traditional lumberyards have repositioned themselves as ‘building materials dealers,’ and Sterritt could credibly take that direction. On the green side, they can supply recycled sheetrock, low VOC adhesives and finishes, kitchen and bathroom countertops, and flooring. Conventional materials include composite decking, fiber cement siding, fastener systems, and a mix of pro tools and hardware. Still, Schuller prefers to describe the company as a lumberyard.
And FSC certified wood and urea-formaldehyde free engineered product is a growing part of the mix for Sterritt. Together, they amount to about 20 percent of the wood business for the company, which brings in about $20 million in annual sales. “That’s up from about zero percent just two years ago,” said Schuller. “Over the past 3 years we really ramped up and created a standing inventory of FSC lumber and plywood and hardwoods. We stock all plywood, ACs, CDXs, anything someone might need in all widths, from 1/4 inch to 3/4 inch. We pressure treat it and fire treat it so we are really able to meet the needs of general contractors on quick notice,” he stated.
Focusing on LEED has changed this company’s basic method of operating. “We have two lumberyards, one large distribution area and the smaller retail yard. We’ve converted all the hardwoods in our smaller retail yard into FSC, and we’re on the verge of changing everything there to FSC,” said Schuller. “A lot of contractors use poplar for their interior work and they have been buying FSC material whether they know it or not. Pricing is really flat, so there’s no premium that’s noticeable in the material.”
Sourcing the material can be challenging, but by now the company has built relationships with some key suppliers. For instance, plywoods come from Martco, but also from Roseburg. Other wood products come from a variety of east coast vendors. “We keep a steady inventory of everything to meet the builder’s needs,” Schuller can boast. “We’re supplying jobs as far away as Detroit and Florida, simply because we actually have the material here.”
Last year, Sterritt sent about $70,000 worth of FSC moldings to a job in Detroit, and they just recently sent a couple thousand sheets of FSC plywood to Connecticut and New York.
Two-Stepping: Some of that FSC inventory goes to other yards. “We’ve reached the point where we now supply the product to distributors just because we have it readily available,” said Schuller. “These are other dealers who have clients calling them for FSC material and they find us, so we’ll wholesale it to them.” Sterritt has even become the East Coast distributor of FSC certified ipé and garapa hardwood decking from Bolivia.
As for the future, Schuller envisions that there could be a time when Sterritt decides to become two separate business entities, just to keep the materials separate. “Or we might just convert everything to green. In five years, will everyone be green? Is that where the market is headed?” he wonders. “By then, maybe all building materials will meet the standards of the USGBC and the NAHB’s Green Building program.”