Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: When Americans need lumber, most automatically head to the big box stores. And while Home Depot and Lowe's have reported sharp increases in sales, independent lumber retailers continue to leave the scene.
The recent demise of Rennekamp Lumber after 58 years in the West End leaves Paul Lumber in Lawrenceville and Allegheny Millworks on the South Side as the last two standing in the city. The Houston-Starr Co. is a block from the city in Wilkinsburg and about 10 independents sell lumber outside the city in Allegheny County.
2 comments:
The idea of a big box retailer being our lumber supplier makes me shudder. Home Depot and Lowes are typically staffed by low paid employees who do not have benefits and that translates into a lack of ownership and desire to be helpful. Every time I have to deal with an employee there they are not helpful because they are not invested in growing the Home Depot brand or their reputation. As we get better prices from buying in bulk we see people who are abused by these big box retailers but it has not lead us to pay more for better service. With that said I can't claim innocence on this because the convenience of McMaster Carr has many times lead me to buy from them something that I could have picked up locally because I can find everything online in one place and have it shipped to me the next day. The little guys will all get run out of business and most corporations are part of some conglomerate parent company so once the little guy is gone the chains will only compete with each other and then prices will skyrocket. You can't trust these large companies and with the little guy gone the supply will be governed by a select few who can dictate the price and who it is sold too. We are most of the way down a slippery slope.
Luke's right, as consumer's we're constantly playing the market as we complain about retailer but the run to the other without skipping a beat. More often than not now I find myself saying 'Home Depot's site sucks you can't find anything - look at McMaster, Grainger or Fastenal...", which is really unfortunate but let's be honest the convenience of the internet plays well to our laziness as customers.
Rewind a few years and even for me the situation was different, the Rennekamp's talk about loyal customer's and I used to fit that description at a couple of hardware stores and lumber supplier. I could find most of what I needed and they were always patient with me when I was trying to do something really weird by their standards. It was at that time that I found myself saying "Don't bother with Home Depot, let me call Frank - we'll have a truck here in a couple hours." And even then I'd drive an hour just to go to my back up lumberyard before going to the Depot. Sadly though, and this one is on me, since moving to Pittsburgh I haven't built that report with local vendors here so I've just been feeding the beasts. It's sad to see a family business like the Rennekamp's close because you know they were passionate about what they were doing, we can only hope that Luke is wrong and the market trend can someday reverse and help the little guys climb back on top.
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