Frank Bryant, Mike Finck, Jim Lewman, Trina Musgrave, Chad Gomon, Steve Locatelli, Tom Armstrong and Jim Frodsham are some members of the All-Coast sales team.
All-Coast Is All Quality, All the Time
By Wayne Miller
Cloverdale, Calif.— The true test of quality is not what can be produced in special circumstances for special customers. Quality shows in consistency, when every customer is special. It is a 100 percent commitment, 100 percent of the time. At All-Coast Forest Products Inc., a lumber wholesale distributor that is headquartered here, those words are not only said, but lived day in and day out.
“You have to always strive to understand what you can do for customers to help them improve their business,” said Kent Bond, president of All-Coast. “We strive to do that and to find those answers, so we can shape our business to help our customers. The key is to understand what will help our customers make their businesses more successful.”
The company handles a multitude of products, including: Softwood lumber, timbers, siding, trim and fascia products, decking and railing products, treated products, interior paneling, trim and finish products, hardw
Steve Bernardi, Linda Rowe and Nick Kent, president of NAWLA, take a mill tour and look at some Douglas Fir timbers ready for corbel cutting.
ood lumber, solid sawn framing and engineered framing products, specialty and industrial products and unlimited standard and custom milling patterns. Main species offered by the company include Douglas Fir, Inland Pine, and Western SPF, Redwood, Western Red Cedar and Alaskan Yellow Cedar.
All-Coast also mills every pattern in the books published by the Western Wood Products Assoc., the California Redwood Assoc. and the Western Red Cedar Lumber Assoc.
“Virtually any pattern or profile that anybody could possibly need can be handled by us,” Bond said. “We can custom mill a pattern within 48 hours, often times sooner and deliver it on the next scheduled truck.”
He continued, “We treat our suppliers as partners. We want a supplier partnership, not just a vendor or another mill. Some may be manufacturing a product and want us to go figure out how to market it - that is not what we want. We want a supplier partnership, not just a vendor or another mill. Some may be manufacturing a product and they want us to go figure out how to market it—that is not what we want. We are in it together and it must be mutually beneficial to all involved and for long term to create value.”
That same philosophy spills over into the customer side of business. There is a three-prong approach to the sales effort at All-Coast.
Jorge Vargas, of All-Coast Forest Products Inc. in Cloverdale, Calif., moves solid-sawn timber products.
“There are three different categories that make up our sales teamour sales team falls under,” he said. “Our outside sales people are responsible for their accounts and they visit those accounts on a regular basis. There are inside sales people who back up those outside sales people. They have relationships with everybody in every territory. Then we have builder specialists who contact architects and builders and handle promotional work in the field. However, we do not sell directly to them. We only sell to retailers, mass merchandisers, or jobbers and some industrial accounts.”
The concept of a builder specialist is to create markets and build brand—basically pull product through the supply chain, Bond explained.
“It has a specific focus and that is for brands within All-Coast’s control, whether it’s an internal brand or external brand that we control exclusively,” Bond said.
To distribute its lumber and building products across the 10 Western states, All-Coast operates four strategically located facilities. There are two operations in California—one in Chino and the other in Cloverdale. Other distribution centers are in Englewood, Colo., and Salt Lake City, Utah. The Chino and Cloverdale operations include remanufacturing capabilities. The Colorado plant was recently expanded to include a remanufacturing plant and a pre-stainer. Another pre-st
Chae Yim runs the Stetson Ross 4A4 timber sizer and grading timbers after processing.
ainer will be added in Salt Lake City in the near future.
A company-owned fleet of 27 trucks makes deliveries on a regular basis throughout a 10 state service area.
“We do not outsource our deliveries,” Bond said. “Having control from the minute that sales order comes in, and up to the time it arrives at the customer location, is paramount for us. Controlling the quality and service through the entire phase from order to delivery is critical to us.”
All-Coast runs scheduled deliveries to locations throughout the West. That schedule can be found on the company’s website at www.all-coast.com.
“As soon as we make a commitment to that customer, that truck is rolling, whether it has one piece on it or a thousand,” Bond said. “Most of the time we can get customers the products they need the next day.”
All of the trucks can continue rolling because they are backed by an extensive inventory.
Mark Bernardi is processing timbers through an Albany/COE bandmill.
“We keep a large inventory of product for one reason: so our customers don't have to,” Bond said. “Our basket of lumber and building material Softwood products includes Structural Framing – ewp, glb, timbers, framing; Outdoor Living – decking, lattice, trellis; Interior and Exterior – paneling, molding, siding, fascia, trim; in softwood and hardwood species. Redwood, Cedar, Fir, Hemlock, Pine, Spruce and a variety of pressure treated woods. We also carry selected hardwood products and building materials. Combined with our just-in-time delivery pledge, our inventory relieves customers of financial and storage burdens, while still meeting the needs of their customers for rapid delivery. We basically have defined the art of distribution.”
Of course, none of this could happen without the dedication of All-Coast’s 200 employees.
“Everybody on our Team is a key player,” Bond said. “We have titles, but they just define the responsibilities we have. Titles do not make one position more important than the other. If there is not a driver to pull that truck tomorrow, it It really doesn’t matter what my position is within the company because it takes the entire Team to execute our commitments and provide value to our customers.”
Patricia Santos, Maria Rodriguez, Salvador Rubio, Maria Chanure is producing Redwood finish products through a Mattison 229 moulder.
And those employees are backed by one simple philosophy, “it has got to be fun.” There are 11 different statements that make up the All-Coast philosophy, like safety first, no politics and do the right thing. However, none are as important has having fun.
“Fun is probably the biggest aspect of our philosophy that we focus on,” Bond stated. “In my opinion, if we’re not having fun doing this, it doesn’t make sense to do it.”
The “fun” aspect of the business seems to be working. The firm has been around for 35 years. All-Coast Forest Products was founded in 1975 by Daryl Bond, Kent’s father, as a small wholesale distributor in the southern California town of Whittier. There were five employees. Three years later, the company broke ground on 20 acres of land in the neighboring town of Chino. The staffing increased to 50, and All-Coast was well on its way to its goal of becoming a dominant lumber distributor in the region.
Alejandro Delgado is grading finished Douglas Fir pattern lumber off of a Stetson Ross 610-A1 matcher.
“We are a tenacious bunch of people because when my Dad purchased the company from John Hampton, we were battling with some stiff and well established competition and old time lumber companies,” Bond said. “There were double digit lending rates and a housing market that was collapsing around us. My father Dad sank every dime he had back into this company and there are some employees still with us today who went through that. We still have that tenacious fighting spirit with us today and it is part of the culture of the company.”
Kent Bond believes that the people at All-Coast, All-Coast customers, good supplier partners, the company culture and fighting spirit will continue to motivate All-Coast Forest Products to succeed for many years to come.
Patricia Santos and Maria Rodriguez pull finished Western Red Cedar siding blanks off of the Mattison 229 moulder.
