The Grit Blueprint

Navigating Industry Challenges: From Talent Recruitment to AI Implementation with Craig Webb

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The building materials industry is evolving with technological advances and operational challenges, requiring dealers to execute strategically rather than rely on market tailwinds. The conversation explores how independents can compete with growing consolidation trends by identifying specific market needs and providing services that larger companies can't match.

• The industry needs to improve recruitment of minorities and women to address talent shortages
• Data analytics reveals surprising insights about customer profitability that challenge conventional wisdom
• Technologies like electronic shelf labels and repurposed security cameras offer competitive advantages with 18-month ROI
• Specialty dealers are consolidating faster than lumberyards due to product consistency and lower inventory management challenges
• Installed sales, particularly for complex products like windows and doors, represent significant growth opportunities
• Co-ops provide independent dealers with buying power to compete against larger competitors
• The Construction Supply 150 report provides benchmarking data on sales per store, technology adoption, and staffing challenges

To learn more about industry trends and connect with Craig Webb, visit webb-analytics.com or follow him on LinkedIn.


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Craig Webb:

This country is full of needs, of people who need a lumber yard in their county. As long as you can find people who can support you and supply to you, and as long as you can provide a service that other people aren't giving, there are opportunities to move ahead and move up.

Stefanie Couch:

I think if we can help people understand what is to be gained to be in this industry, there is so much opportunity here.

Craig Webb:

I agree with you. I think where we're falling short right now is working harder to recruit minorities, and that is something that I think to get to the kids in the schools and help them understand that this is a career you can have and you can really do well.

Stefanie Couch:

I think data is one of the worst things in our industry, as far as we have a lot of it, but we don't know what to do with it or how to extrapolate it.

Craig Webb:

There's been some interesting discoveries too recently, like what is the cost of serving your customer. We're still not seeing a lot of dealers get into it, but those who are are sometimes getting very surprising results as to whether their best customers actually are their best customers.

Stefanie Couch:

Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast, the show for bold builders, brand leaders and legacy makers in the construction and building industry. I'm your host, stephanie Couch, and I've been in this industry my entire life. Whether we're breaking down what's working in sales and marketing, new advances in AI and automation, or interviewing top industry leaders, you're going to get real world strategies to grow your business, build your brand and lead your team. Let's get to work. Thank you for joining me on the Grit Blueprint Podcast. I'm Stephanie Couch and today I'm live in Orlando, florida, with my friend, craig Webb from Web Analytics. Hi, craig, good morning, hi there.

Craig Webb:

How are you?

Stefanie Couch:

Doing. Great Thanks for joining me today.

Craig Webb:

I appreciate the opportunity.

Stefanie Couch:

We have been seeing each other all over. I know you travel a lot. Trade show season is coming to a close in the spring at least and we are wrapping it up here at the Do it Best Market. How has this trade show season been for you so far?

Craig Webb:

Well, it's been an exciting time. I think people are combination nervous and excited about where things are heading. I think they realize that it's going to be a hard slog this year and they are facing the reality that there is no tailwind this year. There's no exciting, dramatic rise in prices that are going to get them forward. I've been telling people that it's like being on a paddle board the only way you get forward is to do your own paddling.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, and it hasn't been that way for a while. I mean, you know, the last four or five years has just been such a swell and if you were in the game you were doing well, and now you've actually got to, like you said, be rowing and be working and thinking about things. Maybe that you haven't thought about.

Craig Webb:

That's why this year is probably going to be about execution and the quality of your operation, as opposed to just standing at the door and waiting for people to rush in.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, no more shooting fish in a bucket, I guess. Well, it's been a relatively exciting week. I saw yesterday that you were covering the QXO beacon acquisition. Finally got word that that is going to go through. I have spent some time studying Brad Jacobs and I know you've met with him. Pretty interesting. What's the latest thought on that?

Craig Webb:

Well, the latest thought on that should be encouraging to everyone else in construction supply, which is to say that a man who thinks in terms of billions of dollars sees potential in the construction supply industry, and the fact that he believes that this is where you can make some decent money should be a sign to everyone else that this is a place where you can make some decent money.

Stefanie Couch:

Absolutely. And I feel like one other thing that we should take from Brad decent money Absolutely. And I feel like one other thing that we should take from Brad obviously a brilliant, brilliant man has built $8 billion companies eight different times, gone to a billion which is almost unheard of and gone public that many times is that he believes strongly that technology is what's going to take our industry to the next level. He's already hired a chief AI officer who used to work at Target as an AI officer, and some other companies. We need to be thinking, especially in small to mid-market businesses, about how we can use technology to take our business to the next level. If people think that it's not here already and they're waiting and they're going to see what happens, they will be left behind. I think it's important to be thinking about that.

Craig Webb:

I think that it is important to be thinking about that Now. Frankly, there's not. It doesn't really matter. I think so much that you're on the bleeding edge of technology. If you can just sit back and watch a little bit to see what bigger companies are doing, other dealers are doing, there are those opportunities that will come along and the prices will be a little bit lower and the opportunities will be better. That's not to say that you should just become an ostrich and stick your head in the sand and wait several years for things to come along. You need to be aware of what's going on, but I don't think you necessarily need to be the first out of the gate. This is still a people business, and figuring out how to mix those people and make those people more technologically enabled is, I think, one of the names of the game.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, and I don't think it's going to ever go away from the people part of the business. I think it's just allowing, hopefully, tech to help our people do things that only people can do and take some of those little processes like collecting data and how do we use that stuff and put that into the technology? We've seen so many market shifts in the last three to five years with M&A and that's a huge thing that we're seeing. Nation's Best is one of the Do it Best members. That's here Chris Miller and his team, uslbm, bfs. There's many Home Depot acquisition of SRS. How does mergers and acquisitions? What do you see that doing in the next 18 to 24 months and how do you think it changes the face of our business? Can independents stay competitive with these big dogs just continuing to get bigger?

Craig Webb:

Well, one of the great things about the supply channel in the United States is that it's not one supply channel. The people who are big builders have different needs than the people who are custom builders, who are different than the people who are home flippers, who are different than the people who are remodelers and consumers, and consequently it's possible to have several different types of building material dealers in the same market. A good example of that is Minneapolis, where you've almost got layers of dealers who specialize in particular things. So, in one sense, if you want to be the Godzilla of lumber yards, there's only a couple of people up there who are going to be in that position.

Craig Webb:

But, then again, this country is full of needs, of people who need a lumber yard in their county and maybe the lumber yard is owned by people in the next county over and it's a two branch yard or whatever. But we're going to continue to see that and that's not going to go away.

Stefanie Couch:

I grew up in a family lumber business who ended up selling to someone else is still independent and I think a lot about. Should I go back and open a lumber or should I buy that lumber yard back? What would you say to someone like me that has some experience, or someone maybe that just thinks it's a good idea, that wants to open an independent lumberyard or specialty door and window location. What would you say to them? Are they crazy or is it a good idea?

Craig Webb:

No, they're not crazy. Actually, when I'm keeping track of building material dealers openings, enclosures and acquisitions, there are some greenfield places out there in which people saw the need, in their county or in their area, to open up. As long as you can find people who can support you and supply to you, and as long as you can provide a service that other people aren't giving, there are opportunities to move ahead and move up.

Stefanie Couch:

I only think about it once or twice a day. I have a few other things in the pipeline that I'm doing, but it's hard because retail is a tough game. But where I live is a really interesting area that, like I said, it does appeal to me. But I think that this is another thing. When we think about specifically in LBM, but even in specialty building materials like let's think about remodeling windows, doors, all these things that are coming down the pipeline, remodeling, zonda says, is going to be a huge uptick in the next six years. Five to six years.

Stefanie Couch:

If you could really, like you said, hone in on an area that needs something and there's going to be a wave of that, it could be a very profitable business and most people might not want to go to a big dealer to buy that. They want someone local or those contractors. So I think there is a market. It's interesting to think about that. You actually have come out with a report recently talking about the growth curve of lumber yards versus specialty dealers and how that's growing sort of at a different rate. Can you talk a little more about that, what you're seeing?

Craig Webb:

Well, first to define the people who sell lumber mainly for a living, that's what I call them lumber yards. Everybody else who might specialize in selling non-lumber, non-framing material parts of the house, that's what we're calling specialty dealers. So the roofers, the drywallers, the people who are selling siding and the like. We're seeing a lot more and a lot faster consolidation in the specialty building material place, in part because the number of SKUs that you need, the number of products that you need and how long they last in the yard are different than when you've got wood. Wood unfortunately tends to get a little old pretty fast, so you've got to move it, you've got to do different things with it and the specialty dealers that sort of lends itself a little bit more toward having things more consistent across the country as well as how you buy your materials. I think it's one reason why Brad Jacobs went for a specialty dealer rather than for a lumberyard first.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I agree totally. I think that that commodity business is a hard game and with all the things that are possibly coming down the pipe with tariffs and all of this stuff going on with environmental things, we don't really know what the lumber market is going to do with that. What are your gut feelings on that? I mean, obviously it's still really up in the air, but I know you're very connected. You were a reporter for years, you still are a reporter and your pulse couldn't be any more on the vein there. What do you think is going to happen with tariffs? No pressure, no pressure.

Craig Webb:

No pressure. Well, the first thing that popped into my head is well, what is this going to broadcast? Because certainly, as of today, it's a whole different game than April 2nd and the like and what's happening after that.

Craig Webb:

Now there's two things that we should remember about tariffs, because we tend to use the word to mean two different things. There are duties and countervailing duties that the government imposes on products that it believes are being unfairly sold at a low price, and those already exist for building materials, particularly lumber. Then there are tariffs which are really more of a political act, in which you say I'm just going to slap this on you because I want to get some extra money and I want to really punish you for what I believe is unfair trade, and we're going to have duties rising no matter what, because the government's just determined that, in terms of lumber, those numbers have to rise a little bit. The tariffs are more of a political negotiation situation, and that's going to really depend on whether the bourbon makers get angry and the farmers get angry at the government and try to negotiate different deals.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, it's going to be an interesting month or two, I think, for all of us and everyone's sort of watching with bated breath. But the truth is that we can only do so much, and I think what you said to open the podcast really is. What reigns true for me is that action and execution are the things that all of us can control and we can focus on, and that is what we should be spending our time hopefully working on in our businesses instead of, you know, thinking about the myriad of things that are keeping us up at night that we can't control. But speaking of keeping dealers and distributors in our business up at night, what are a few of the things that you think we? You talk to a ton of people out in the market. You're one of the most connected people in our industry. What are you hearing that are keeping people up at night? What are they worried about in their business?

Craig Webb:

Well, I think in general they're worried about the inability to plan. That's sort of driving them crazy right now. If prices go up, they'll just charge higher prices. They're not seen as the malefactors of evil when it comes to pricing. I do think that they worry a great deal about their staff and finding staff and finding good staff. They worry about succession planning, and if one of their key employees gets hit by a beer truck one day, how do they handle that? I think they do worry about a new competitor coming to town, but I think, more generally, I think they worry about the state of the economy in their particular market. There's this general belief that when we talk about the housing market, it's as if houses are distributed and built in a spread out area across the whole country. The truth is is that the housing market in the United States is really about five states.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, mostly in the southeast right now.

Craig Webb:

Mostly in the southeast. Yeah, texas, florida, arizona, california, charlotte, north Carolina, those sorts of places. But then you know you get the entire three quarters, five, six of the country. That's not their market. It's a whole different thing. I remember one dealer who said to me we don't have housing starts in my market.

Stefanie Couch:

We have housing start, yeah it's really interesting to think about that, because you know I'm from Georgia but I lived in Texas and worked there for a while, started a big distribution location in Houston and Dallas and there's no busier markets than that, absolutely.

Stefanie Couch:

You know it's when you start to look at the population and then I also worked in the Orlando market. So when you get that kind of that kind of hockey stick growth, you start to get on fire and then to think about going to a smaller market where there is no fire, there's maybe one flame like one match burning. It is a very different connotation and I do think when people think about planning and forecasting and hiring, you know, hiring one person in a market where you really aren't sure will we have 10 starts and will I get a 10th of those in my market, that's really hard to think about. Talking about talent, I do. I see here the same thing. You know, people thinking about how are we going to get and train and retain top talent? Yes.

Stefanie Couch:

What's going to happen when these amazing leaders in our company that are 55, 65 range start to retire, and that does keep a lot of people up at night? How do we combat that in our industry? What do you think is the answer to getting people that are younger to want to come work in LBM?

Craig Webb:

Well, sometimes I joke that nobody in most communities know who my readers are, because their stores are located by the railroad tracks in the bad part of town, and I think that there is this image that we have of being, you know, hot and nasty and behind the times and the like, and I think it just takes early, early, early explanations of what's going on, and I've been fascinated at the number of children's books that have been created by the foresters, by the roofers, by the builders, books that are promoting women in the industry, the house that she built and the like there are, to borrow a phrase from George HW Bush, george Bush I that he talked about a thousand points of light, and there actually are a thousand points of light out there in terms of individual activities by people to promote things.

Craig Webb:

Now, the second thing that's in our favor right now is that I think America has finally gotten rid of the notion that you have to go to college in order to succeed. Sure, and that has changed things too, in part because the plumbers are making more than the pros yeah, with no student loan debt.

Craig Webb:

That's right. Or, as you know, my pickup truck costs more than your Mercedes, yeah, and so you're starting to see that happen too. But I think it has to be a steady, full court press on the next generation of Americans to make them understand. Now I will add one more thing that I think is one of the more fascinating trends over the last 18 years, and that is the greater number of women who are taking over building material dealers. They are frequently inheriting them from their fathers, yeah, and perhaps in the old days, if Sonny Boy wasn't interested, then the place got sold. Now the woman's taking over, and that's a whole different group of people, a whole different network. Sure, sometimes I think that a lot of lumber yards consist of people who play together on the high school football team, and now we're starting to see a different group.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I agree, and I actually was with you in the National Harbor Show last week and we actually had a women's event that my company, build Women, co-sponsored with them and there was just so many amazing women there. And I know HBS Dealer has a huge event. A lot of the bigger companies are having their own in-house events and it is going to be more frequent as we keep doing these things, to see women that are leading and really doing an exceptional job, and I think most companies and most men in the industry are wildly supportive of that. I mean, I've had more men support me than women because they're just out there. You know the men are very supportive. Someone here at Do it Best, russ Catherine, has been so welcoming, and Eric Knox another one. For me, it's like it doesn't matter that I'm a woman. I mean, yes, I stand out a little bit in a pink hat and a dress because I look different than most of the other women on the floor, and that's the thing is, I never feel hardly ever feel like it's a disadvantage. I almost always feel like it's an advantage for me, and so I think, if you can see that, as a woman being that, it is an advantage and look at it from that perception and that frame, you can really do a lot in this industry. And going back to the schools with the kids and the students and the books, I think it is a branding issue of, hey, how early can we start to show people that this is an option?

Stefanie Couch:

I remember growing up in my dad's lumberyard. A few times when I was young I thought, oh well, you know, this person's dad's a lawyer, her dad's a doctor. All my friends had different professions that their parents did and I thought, well, my dad owns a lumber yard and sometimes I didn't think that was a really cool thing because it wasn't shiny like those other things. Now I'm like my dad owned a big business and he was killing it and he was very successful and probably made a lot more money than their dads did. Not that it's all about that, but I just didn't have that frame and so I think if we can help people understand what is to be gained to be in this industry and also home services and things like that, there is so much opportunity here.

Craig Webb:

I agree with you. I think where we're falling short right now is working harder to recruit minorities. Even to this day, the number of black faces that you see is very, very few More Hispanics actually than blacks and that is something that I think, once again, to get to the kids in the schools and help them understand that this is a career you can have and you don't you know, even if you do go to a college, you can come back and you can really do well, absolutely you can come back and you can really do well, Absolutely.

Stefanie Couch:

And I think that with the next five years to 10 years over, they say over 40% of our industry is going to be retiring.

Stefanie Couch:

It actually could be more than that. Depending on how some of these people they made so much money the last few years, Some of them might, if it gets tough, they might not want to stay in for another five to 10 years. They might retire early. Go do something else, go play golf, go do whatever they want to do, and I think it's important right now to start to get that next generation in. And then the next problem we got to solve is the training issue is that we don't, as historically most business I've ever seen have, hey, go sit by Craig and listen to what he says and learn everything he knows. And if Craig decides, like you said, to leave tomorrow without any notice or get sick or hits by bus, or if I decide I want to go work for someone else, people are terrified of losing that intrinsic knowledge that's in there with the people that are running the business. Is there a way that we can get people to spend the time to create a training program that actually works up front?

Craig Webb:

Well, there are a number of companies out there that are engaged in training programs and are starting to work on this. I just was talking with an executive at the Home Depot who's developing an entire training program. I mean, greg Brooks has been doing this for years. You know, casey Voorhees travels around the country teaching people how to do material takeoffs. I met a German fellow named Wolfgang Zuputzlitz who is over there and working with DIY centers, but a lot of his technology can be brought over. The understanding that has to have on the part of the new employee is that once they got hired, they might have been hired for attitude, but they weren't being hired for skill, and that their education is only beginning Now. If you go to work for ABC Supply, you get a six-week training class when you get hired and they know that at the very start class. When you get hired, and they know that at the very start you're going to have to know.

Craig Webb:

You know what is, what is roofing, and a lot of us on the lumberyard side haven't thought as much about that. But in many ways our world is even more complicated than the others.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I mean something as simple as why is a two by four not actually two inches wide? Why does it measure one and a half? And I, you know, I think about. I come from a door window, millwork background, talk about complicated. You know you have 15 questions on a simple, simple door and if you get one of those questions wrong, the door is wrong, right and it. It's usually a custom built thing, so it's not like a bundle of two befores where if you accidentally send eight foot pre-cuts instead of nine foot pre-cuts you can just put it back on the yard and resell it. That door is probably trash at that point, or salvage at least.

Craig Webb:

True, you know, as Le Corbusier said, a house is a machine that we live in, and I think people fail to realize just how much engineering goes into that machine.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, for sure, it's definitely complicated, but the best part about it is that people that want to come into our business that are young can learn this. We all learned it. I didn't know what a door was and how to hand a door when I was born, even though some people might think that's how I came out, since I was born into the business, but I had to learn that, just like everyone else, and I think that if you're hungry and you want to take action and learn, you can. Hopefully we have processes and training programs that help make that easier for people and that will keep them in the business so they don't quit after a few weeks with no training.

Craig Webb:

Yeah, I think that frequently, the profession we get into often relates to who our best teacher was, and we do need better teachers in a sense, to have people understand the marvel that a house is.

Stefanie Couch:

I agree so much. Yeah, I think schools having shop class, having education classes around construction, is really a cool thing, and even with the design aspect of how beautiful and artistic a lot of these custom homes could be you know, the older homes have so much marvel in them We've lost a little bit of that art and I think to bring that back would be really intriguing to a lot of kids that maybe are artistic that think, oh well, I'm an art person, I could go do this thing and design homes Like, how cool would that be to see that back in our schools. I think that's a that's a mission of mine to somehow hopefully bring that to be something kids think about more. Well, I want to talk transition a little bit to technology.

Stefanie Couch:

Last week you spoke at NHS and you actually had a cool speech that I listened to. You speak about 50 ideas in 50 minutes, which I liked because it had a cat meme in it. So it was a very entertaining speech. But you had a lot of different things, ranging from tech to just, you know, different ideas for marketing. But talk to me about just a few of the ideas that you spoke about in the tech realm that people should be looking at thinking about in our business right now.

Craig Webb:

Well, from a practical standpoint, of course, artificial intelligence is something that a lot of people are talking about and are dabbling with when it comes to, let's say, writing a job description or writing a series of increasingly angry memos to get paid, that sort of thing, and those are things that I'm seeing dealers dabble in around the country.

Craig Webb:

One thing that fascinated me was to look more on the retail side of the general economy and ask well, what are retailers around the country doing that a dealer would care about, Because every dealer has a cash register, so they're a retail business too. A couple of them that came down the pike were electronic shelf labels.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I had not seen that until you. I mean. I had not thought about it for our business.

Craig Webb:

Pretty cool, if you go to Kohl's or Best Buy. You tend to see these kind of you know raunchy looking black and white things, but they are so colorful today and they are so packed full of data and so interactive, that you can do things that can really help boost sales.

Craig Webb:

The second thing is cameras or software that takes the cameras you're using right now for security and providing data on which aisles are crowded the most, which shelves are unfilled the most. How do you replenish things more efficiently so that you can get extra sales? Those two things. There was an entire section on buy online, pick up in store and how you can do those things fancier. I think that a lot of these have been accepted in Europe a little bit more, in part because their labor costs are higher, but the costs are starting to drop and, for example, with electronic shelf labels, there are dealers I'm talking with who are doing deals with the label manufacturers and they're getting a payoff in about 18 months.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, that's something I really think people could do. That's a small investment even for, like the cameras you think about. If you have an area of your store that's getting a ton of traffic already, maybe you want to expand that area, maybe you want to put it on an end cap, maybe you want to put it by the front of the store. If you don't know those data points, it's really it's hard to know how to move or what to do. We're all just going off of a lot of gut feeling in our industry.

Stefanie Couch:

You're a data guy. I love data as well. I like to look at it visionary, big picture. After the fact, I'm not in the weeds in the spreadsheets as much myself, but I think data is one of the worst things in our industry, as far as we have a lot of it but we don't know what to do with it or how to extrapolate it. And I think that things like that, and also accomplishing AI tools being put into our data to look at hey, here's this big, huge spreadsheet that I can't possibly take the time to look through. What about looking and getting me these data points with an AI prompt? What do you think of that? Are people doing that yet?

Craig Webb:

Well, I think we've had a slow and steady change toward becoming a little bit more interested in data. One of them, interestingly enough, just has to do with how inflation has figured into our lives, because people were constantly measuring themselves in terms of dollars and they realized that they needed to also look at volume. And so how many sticks am I selling versus what's the dollar value of those sticks? Yeah, so you're starting to see that. Second, frankly, our technology is getting better at being able to let us visualize what we see, create graphs and charts and the like, so that we can immediately spot the differences in ways that, when you're looking at a row of numbers, you just can't get excited about. So those things are all figuring in and we're better able to collect some of the data we need Now, that said, should people?

Craig Webb:

Does this mean people abandon the old ideas like on time in full? No, on time in full probably means more than it ever did, but we need better ways to do things. There's been some interesting discoveries too recently, like what is the cost of serving your customer. We're still not seeing a lot of dealers get into it, but those who are are sometimes getting very surprising results as to whether their best customers actually are their best customers.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point that I see a lot in my work with people is when you ask people who they serve, the answer is almost everyone that walks in the door almost every time. You know we have a few companies where they're serving B2C, they're serving contractors, they're serving DIY, they're serving commercial I mean, everybody that could buy is buying. And then when you start to ask, well, what is your profitability on each segment of that? They have a top line number that they think is somewhere around what it is, but it doesn't dig into the cost of serving anyway. And so there probably is somewhere in that mix that two or three of those channels probably might need to go away totally or either raise the prices or whatever it is.

Stefanie Couch:

And also, when you send your sales team out to try to say go get business, you have just too many people that they go out to and they don't even have a real plan of let's go execute on this exact person. And I think that data, if you could get down to that brass tacks of this person, this exact thing, is what our perfect customer is and know that, then you might actually spend way less time and effort to make more money with those people. Do you see people? Is anyone doing that? Really well, you don't have to name names, but are people starting to think about that in?

Craig Webb:

our industry. Well, I am seeing some dealers who are deciding that, yes, certain types of customers are the ones they want to go after. I remember one person this is in a related industry who purposely set up his website so that it wouldn't go for the very richest people, it wouldn't go for the very poorest people, it would go for the people in between because, he realized the very richest people were the ones who were going to give him the most grief on projects and ultimately cost him money.

Craig Webb:

He wanted people who were a little bit more accepting of his advice and his ideas. And that's where he was, that's where his target was. And then I've also seen certain people have decided well, I'm going to be really, really good, for example, on millwork, and I'm not really going to have that big of a store that you walk into. So you know, I'm not really encouraging foot traffic, I'm really encouraging other people. Now there's one dealer I remember visiting. You walk to the front door and it says unless you are prepared to do at least $100,000 worth of business with me, please go to blankety, blank big box down the street.

Stefanie Couch:

That's funny. Well, and there's something to be said for being bold enough to pick your stake and put your stake in the ground and say this is where I'm going to stand and this is what I'm going to do. I do think that there's some bold disruptors out there in our industry. Obviously, brad Jacobs is the one that comes to mind the most for me being a disruptor, but he also is a disruptor with a ton of money and a lot of backing and a lot of publicity. Are there disruptors out there that you think are doing some really cool stuff in our industry, that you see and you're like, wow, that's a really cool thing they're doing, or that person you're watching, or that company you're watching, anything that stands out to you?

Craig Webb:

Well, usually if somebody does something successfully in the first year, everybody else is glomming onto it. I'm not even sure Brad Jacobs is a disruptor. Yet All Brad Jacobs did is just spend $11 billion to buy a company. We don't know if the company he's bought is going to be dramatically different in the future or even dramatically better.

Craig Webb:

In some ways, a lot of the race in our business is sort of like NASCAR the winner is six inches ahead of the other one at the finish line. It's not like we have people jumping in leaps and bounds ahead. Now I have seen some people. I have seen some general trends that people are getting into. One is more installed sales, certainly the acquisition of trust companies to provide a greater share of wallet and to get that value add.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah and after COVID, that was such a huge point of contention for people that they couldn't get trusses, so then they couldn't build the rest of the house, so then people were just sitting and waiting. So I see why people want to do that Same thing with door shops. I see people putting in, you know, installed with door shops, and then, like you said, installed turnkey all the way. I think from a homeowner perception, I totally understand why people want that.

Stefanie Couch:

Because if you think about you find a great supplier, you as a homeowner you buy a door, but then you've got to have someone to install it and then that gets sketchy. Because what if you find someone who doesn't know what they're doing and the door or windows leak and these big projects that cost so much, you literally could have to redo the entire thing. And that way if you buy something from someone that does the whole process, even if it's a 1099 contractor they're hiring, they own it and you have the face to go back into that place and look that person in the eye at the counter and say, stephanie, you sold me a crappy bill of goods, you're going to make it right. You don't know if that contractor in a truck is going to answer the phone or if you'll ever see him or her again.

Craig Webb:

Yeah, and if I'm a builder, I know that installing a window or installing a door are two of the parts of the house that are most crucial and most challenging. So if the building material dealer who's selling me the door also offers to install, it. I'm going to want to jump on that opportunity and it's extra money that can be made and it also makes the window manufacturer happy. Absolutely Because they don't have as many callbacks.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, window manufacturer happy, absolutely, because they don't have as many callbacks.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, and on these huge doors, I mean at IBS this year we saw every single thing that we saw was bigger and I mean it's insane. They're like 20 feet wide, 14 feet tall and you think about just the capacity of most normal people. Like you think of a framer trying to install that thing. That is a nightmare, like you're just asking for it. So the more you do those types of installs, the more you know how to do it and those people that are just doing that are really good at it. So I think it makes sense and I think, as we see, I do think people are going to specialize more as we see growth. And if I were going to start a business today, knowing what I know with my, my industry knowledge, something like an installed sales crew for windows or doors or something that is tough, is a great business to get into because there's just not that many people out there doing it well, Some of the most interesting purchases recently have been involving window and door specialists.

Craig Webb:

That's what Kodiak Building Products has done in USLBM. And so, yes, I have said at various times to longtime lumberyard owners well, if you didn't have that family history, if you were just to start right from fresh, what would you do? They all start thinking and looking and they'd say if you were just to start right from fresh, what would you do? And they all start thinking and looking and they'd say, well, I'm not sure I would sell lumber.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. It's a hard game to be in. I mean, you know and it's uh it. My dad used to say when it's up it's good, and when it's bad it's bad, like it is a bad day when the lumber market crashes, and it's always been to me. Like going to Vegas and putting it all in red. It is a little bit like a gambling game.

Craig Webb:

And this is one of the things I think that when you're asking about what are the changes that have happened with dealers over the years, I think a lot of dealers in the old days started as almost like fruit and vegetable merchants. They bought their goods in the morning and then they sold them in the afternoon and they lived or died based on what happened with the changes in the price the afternoon, and they lived or died based on what happened with the changes in the price. I think better dealers today are controlling that a little better, partly because they can buy better, because they're using co-ops and the like and they're actually not counting on the rise or fall of lumber to make their money. They're counting on their operational skills to make the money.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, that's a big deal. And you know, like you said, especially with independents, co-ops like Do it Best, they allow them to leverage the size of that co-op and then you don't have to be a $5, $10 billion company. You can buy with the power of that without being that. With having one local lumberyard you can still leverage that. So I think dealers have gotten more savvy on that and also co-ops have gotten bigger. So you know, like Do it Best is huge. Now with True Value and United they have more buying power themselves. So it's leveraging that and people are just having to get a little bit more cunning and smart about how they're buying. Well, the last question I want to ask you you have a big report coming out May 1st and I know talk a little bit about. Maybe there's one person in the world that doesn't know about your report. It's everywhere, so most people read it. What is this report and what can we expect from this version of it in May?

Craig Webb:

Well, it's called the Construction Supply 150. An attempt to talk about the size and scope of the construction supply industry in America, from the Home Depot down to modest local stores. So we track the revenues of about 150 companies, but we try to give historical perspective over the last years. We try to provide a lot of benchmarks on sales per store or sales per employee, that sort of thing. We have other information about technology being used where you do your takeoffs. This year I'm asking questions about affiliation with co-ops and whether you're changing your affiliation, as is a big subject these days. But also people questions where are the hardest people to find? So it's a combination report that not only tries to measure the industry but also get deep inside the operational issues that dealers face that they can then use as a guide for them to decide how they compare with these benchmarks.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, it's something that I wait for every time it comes out, because it is very much kind of the only place you can find a lot of this information. You're doing something that almost I haven't seen anyone else do, so kudos to you for putting that out there. You have obviously a research and reporting background, so it's your love language, I know for sure, and any like scathing, crazy things that you didn't expect going to be in this report.

Craig Webb:

Scathing, crazy things. No, the biggest challenge I always have is trying to come up with the magic metaphor you know on the front, and in past years we've had surfers, we've had carousels going up and down, we've had surfers, We've had. We've had carousels going up and down. We've had size. I'm trying to decide whether slogging through mud is going to be this year's thing.

Stefanie Couch:

Well you said the paddleboard, so maybe it's that you know the sweaty paddleboarder that's just trying to get just a little bit further down and, you know, not fall off and drown or burn in the sun. But I think it's really cool that you are leading the way here with data in our industry. You're obviously a brilliant mind that's been here a long time and you're very well respected. If people want to work with you at Web Analytics, talk a little bit more about exactly what you do for individuals or dealers that want to work and then how they can contact you.

Craig Webb:

Well, the easiest way to contact me is through my website, which is web2b web W-E-B-B hyphen analyticscom. Okay, and you can reach out to me that way and that's how you can get the reports and read my news. I suggest you follow me on LinkedIn. I have found that that's the easiest way for me to get headlines out to people. I've got about nearly 18,000 people on LinkedIn who are reading me, which is probably better daily than I had when I was a magazine editor.

Stefanie Couch:

LinkedIn's a really powerful tool. I love it.

Craig Webb:

It can do a great job for you. I give presentations to people on whatever the latest news is, so every speech is different from the previous speech. Whatever the latest news is, so every speech is different from the previous speech. And there are times when people a lot of times people will call me up and say do you know somebody who does such and such? And I connect people together and it's one of the joys that I have actually to help introduce one person to another person so that they can each live a better life.

Stefanie Couch:

That's amazing. Well, thank you for everything you've done and I'm excited to hopefully collaborate together more in the future. Thank you for coming on the Grit Blueprint podcast and let's go hit the market floor.

Craig Webb:

Yes, ma'am.

Stefanie Couch:

Let's do it. That's it for this episode of the Grit Blueprint podcast. For more tools, training and industry content, make sure to subscribe here and follow me on LinkedIn and other social media platforms To find out more about how Grit Blueprint can help you grow your business. Check us out at our website, gritblueprintcom.

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