BO Knows... Softwoods / Hardwoods

How does one blend the best of a softwoods industry mentality with that of the hardwoods to score a winning combination? Bo Smith knows, having played professional roles in both the softwood and hardwood leagues.

While a liberal arts major at Oregon State University, Smith was initially drafted into the softwood lumber business by the father of a good friend. His starting position: Sales trainee, with Crown Zellerbach in Omak, Washington. His softwood sales stats were strong, and he progressed to management trainee.

In ’85, Crown Zellerbach was sold to a new owner. For Smith, it meant a series of trades to related pine producing teams—in Louisiana, Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, and Arizona—before he landed in the front office of Albuquerque’s Duke City Lumber as VP of Marketing. During his tenure with Duke City, Smith took on increasing responsibility, including running the saw mills.

But pine’s glory days were fading fast. Smith watched his southwest pine resources dry up, and saw mills close down, in a business completely dependent upon federal timber.

It was then he fielded a call from Tom Talbot, owner of Wisconsin-based Glen Oak Lumber & Milling—a $26 million millwork manufacturing team, in the hardwoods league. When Talbot asked him to be his GM, Smith declared himself a free agent and made the leap.

Now in his 12th season with Glen Oak, Smith is still managing the manufacturing team’s daily operations which are projected to gross $90 million this year. "I promoted Bo to president in December of ‘97, due to his grasp of the business and of the hardwoods industry as a whole," owner and CEO Tom Talbot reports. "Bo oversees the operations from Kentucky, and we talk on a daily basis."

Smith has been bringing his softwood industry influence to bear on Glen Oak since his early days as GM. "The West Coast softwoods industry has more of a production perspective and commodity orientation," he explains. "It specializes more, does more volume and has higher technology ... while the hardwoods industry is more fragmented, smaller, less technical, and tends to make lots of different things for different people."

Glen Oak has always assumed a leadership role in the hardwoods industry by investing in state-of-the-art technology. Moving forward, Smith would like to see the company continue to improve its manufacturing and production efficiencies, while maintaining its sales and marketing edge. "I understand the benefits of both production and sales, and strive to help the company achieve a more equal balance between the two."

Smith achieved exactly that when he established Prime Poplar®, a brand that includes finger-jointed paint-primed mouldings, boards and jambs that have scored big for Glen Oak. "In hindsight, I can honestly say the product acceptance is better than I ever thought it would be," Smith reveals.

He says the idea for the innovative product came about following a visit to a customer. "Seigle’s was the one that got us into it," he recalls, referring to Illinois’ largest millwork center. "At the time, they were complaining about the quality of their pine. The combination of the reduced availability of the West Coast resource with the deterioration in pine quality presented a great opportunity to come up with a product which would truly meet the customer’s needs."

Under Smith’s direction, Glen Oak built a plant in the midst of Kentucky’s poplar timber and work force resources and pioneered a finger-jointed paint-primed product which differed from the traditional offering. "The whole concept was new," Smith explains. "There had been poplar and finger-jointed poplar mouldings before but they had been made out of four-and-a-quarter product. We took West Coast patterns and thicknesses of lumber and asked the local sawmills to cut lumber that would lend itself to traditional West Coast patterns. We went to market in a novel approach, using a hardwood resource to create more traditional West Coast patterns."

Smith gives credit for Prime Poplar’s success to the entire Glen Oak team. "Anybody else could have come up with the same idea and bought the same equipment, but it’s our people that make the difference," he contends. "Both our hourly and supervisory employees in Kentucky insure Prime Poplar’s consistent quality—the real reason for the product’s success. And our sales staff, led by Chicago-area salesman Steve Halder, has done a great job developing the product category."

"What pleases me most about Glen Oak is our ability to pioneer the new products that we’ve had. Glen Oak has significantly changed a portion of the traditional millwork market. What we’ve done with Prime Poplar® for example, is pioneer the acceptance of hardwood mouldings to a traditional softwoods market and give the customer just what the customer wants—a better product at a fair, stable price." And that’s a Win in anybody’s book.

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