Offers A Specialized Approach and Customer-Oriented Mission In Marketing Western Red Cedar
Surrey, BC—It’s been just over a decade since brothers Dale and Richard Bartsch opened the doors to Hy Mark Wood Products Inc. After accumulating more than 40 years of combined experience in the Western Red Cedar industry, they got the entrepreneurial bug and decided to bring their vision of manufacturing and selling high-quality wood products to life.
The company uses about 500,000 to 700,000 board feet of clear-grade Western Red Cedar per month. Most of the lumber is purchased green and dried in the company’s Nyle dehumidification dry kiln, which holds 50,000 to 75,000 board feet of lumber and is run “365 days out of the year,” according to Dale Bartsch, co-founder and president.
Since 2002, Hy Mark Wood has been producing a wide variety of high-quality Cedar wood products, all of which are manufactured and stored in the firm’s climate-controlled facilities. With about 20 employees working single shifts, five days a week, the company specializes in clear and high-end knotty wood products. Hy Mark Wood manufactures and delivers its finished Western Red Cedar products to wholesale distributors in North America. The majority of those wholesale distributors are scattered throughout the Midwest and Northeast.
Hy Mark Wood’s products include premium lumber used for siding, decking, trim boards, beams, fascia, posts and beams, and various other items. All products are produced in a fully enclosed, 30,000-square-foot, climate-controlled environment at a plant in Washington State.
“Our controlled manufacturing environment ensures the highest quality of production, and more importantly, secure, safe and clean conditions for our employees,” said Bartsch. “Our finished Cedar products are then stored inside warehouses, ensuring that pristine product quality is maintained, with no staining.”
A member of the Pacific Lumber Inspection Bureau and the North American Wholesale Lumber Association, Hy Mark Wood is managed by the Bartsch brothers, both of whom were sales representatives in their prior careers. They worked together, on and off, for many years prior to establishing Hy Mark Wood and bring decades of knowledge and experience, and a united vision for product and customer service excellence and innovation, and employee safety.
Richard has over 30 years of experience in the manufacturing and sales of Western Red Cedar products, having worked with numerous companies up until 2002. At Hy Mark Wood, he contributes his expertise in overseeing manufacturing and in product sales. Dale has over 25 years of experience selling Western Red Cedar wood products and contributes his expertise in overseeing product sales.
“We handle all of the sales and purchasing; it’s a pretty tightly-held operation,” explained, Bartsch, who hinted that more management/administrative employees could be in the cards once the economy improves. “Things were going pretty good until 2008 but the home-building downturn hurt us a bit and we had to scale back.”
To deal with the loss of business that came along with the recession, Hy Mark “dug down deep” to find additional customers, according to Bartsch, and in the process also added some new products to its lineup. “We expanded our product mix to meet the needs of those new customers,” he said. “The strategy worked out well because now, with business picking up, we have a good mix of existing and new customers to work with.”
Hy Mark Wood has also invested in its operations by adding a new Weinig moulder to its manufacturing lineup in September. “Once we got that installed it’s now helping us handle a larger volume of highly-specified orders,” said Bartsch, “and allowed us to make the specified patterns that some of our customers were asking for.”
As a customer service-oriented organization, Hy Mark Wood is known for its innovative shipping methods. For example, the company will combine multiple products in one truckload, specific to customer jobs, projects, or needs. It will ship less than a full truckload and delivers a wide variety of products from a single location.
“We eliminate the need to overstock and over-inventory,” said Bartsch. “Our customers appreciate our ability to react to specified orders, ensuring delivery of our premium products in a timely, cost-effective manner.”
With their eye on higher sales volumes for the rest of 2013 and beyond, the Bartsch brothers say business is already picking up and economic conditions are improving in the regions that they serve. “Either something good is happening or we’ve lost competitors – it’s one of the two,” said Bartsch. “If you listen to the economists, housing starts are making a slow rebound. That will be welcome to the wood business.” For more information visit www.hymark.net.
