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Competing as an Independent: Tri County Lumber Company | Sponsored by Do it Best Group

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Dave Ables shares how partnering with co-ops like Do it Best and True Value has enabled his independent lumber and hardware businesses to compete successfully against corporate giants. He discusses innovative strategies including building actual home structures inside his showroom and using technology to document product condition throughout the delivery process.

• Purchased and transformed a True Value store in 2022, winning a Beacon Award for best new hardware store
• Built realistic home displays inside Tri-County Lumber showroom featuring different siding options and window styles
• Developed specialized expertise among staff rather than having everyone know "a little bit about everything"
• Created a system to photograph products at multiple stages to eliminate confusion about product damage
• Serves as an extension of contractors' sales teams, reducing their workload while improving customer experience
• Left corporate logistics career after eight relocations to create stable business opportunities for his three sons
• Uses LinkedIn as a powerful marketing and networking tool to share ideas and connect with industry peers
• Plans expansion by acquiring underserved rural stores within 100-mile radius of current locations
• Emphasizes the importance of preserving the "American dream" of small business ownership

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Dave Ables:

It's really hard for a guy with one store to compete. But now I've partnered with Do it Best, with the buying power of thousands of stores now makes me competitive with the big private equity yards, do it Best. True Values and Co-Ops allow you to be able to compete with those people at the same level, make the same level of profit, provide the same level of service to your customer and it's really a good win-win for everyone.

Stefanie Couch:

Marketing has kind of become a dirty word sometimes in a lot of our traditional businesses because it's a waste of time, and money and all those things.

Dave Ables:

I think LinkedIn is a great tool. That was my artificial intelligence before there was AI. No matter what the situation, I could get an answer from someone throughout the country. No matter where I go, people say I see you on LinkedIn and I love what you guys are doing. I mean, that's free advertising, I don't have to pay for any of that. I want that American dream to live on. Let people have that American dream of starting their own business. Linkedin is a format that can help you do that.

Stefanie Couch:

Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast, the playbook for building unmistakable brands that grow, lead and last in the built world. I'm Stefanie Couch, the founder of Grit Blueprint, and I'm a lifelong building industry insider. I was raised here, built my career here, and now my team and I help others win here. The truth is, you can be the best option in your space and still lose to someone else who simply shows up better and more consistently Each week. On the Grit Blueprint, I'm going to show you how to stand out, earn trust and turn your brand into a competitive advantage that lasts. If you're ready to be seen, known, chosen and become unmistakable, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast. I am your host, Stefanie Couch, and today I'm here with my friend, dave Ables. Welcome to the show, Dave.

Dave Ables:

Thank you very much for having me.

Stefanie Couch:

And you have an amazing lumberyard and a hardware store in Minnesota. I'm excited today to talk to you about what you're doing because you've got some cool stuff happening and you've been in this industry for a little while, but you've got an awesome background. We are actually in Orlando where you and your amazing wife, lori just won an award yesterday for the IHI conference. It's actually a Beacon Award for being an outstanding store. This was actually for your hardware store, which is Three Sons right, correct, okay and it was a great night last night and this show has been really cool. What did you actually win the award for? So tell me a little bit about that.

Dave Ables:

We won the store for best new hardware store and we bought this store in 2022 and then we converted it. It's actually a true value store. My wife, who you've already talked to, runs that store along with our son, David, so obviously with the name Three Sons. We have three sons. My oldest son, David, who's 24, works at that location. He's the store manager. And then I have two sons that work with me at Tri-County Lumber.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about Tri-County Lumber, because you know I grew up in the lumber business. I love a lumber yard and windows and millwork. You just built an amazing new showroom. Yep, Tell me about that.

Dave Ables:

So the new showroom has got, and here's the thing. So I'm going to take this from the standpoint of being a layman. Right, I would sit out there in my office and I would watch people come in and they would see a window display, and the window display would just be a window and a little display area and it would show nail flanges and things, and I would hear someone say well, what's this? Is this what it's going to look like in my house? What's that and that's?

Dave Ables:

a nail flange, and obviously that would be hidden in your home, sure. So we brought on an individual from another yard and he came to me and he said you know what he said? I sat at home the last few nights and I designed you a new showroom Didn't ask him to do it unsolicited, and it was amazing. And I said you know what, steve, you and I are spot on because, ironically, I listen to people that not really understanding exactly what what it is that we're displaying to them. So we built homes inside of Tri-County Lumber. So we have two homes One's a diamond coat and LP. One's a diamond coat home, one's an LP sided home.

Dave Ables:

They all feature Marvin windows at different levels. One's a Marvin signature home, one's a Marvin elevate home and we also have a Marvin Essential home, and I think it's just been a game changer. So again, my office is right out there. Now, when you come in or when someone comes in to pick out their materials, they're in love automatically and they can see it as if it's in their home. And the siding and the trim. So on the insides we have shiplap, we have sheetrock, we have it's all done. There's different trim profiles around the insides of the windows. It's just as if it's in your own home. It's really been a game changer for us.

Stefanie Couch:

That's awesome Seeing higher end products, especially in person, being able to touch and feel them. I believe it's the best way to upsell and to make people understand what they're actually getting and how different it is. Have you seen a big difference in homeowners that are coming in with contractors? Because I know you have a lot of contractor business and they're bringing people in and they're using it to help themselves be able to explain and sell better right.

Dave Ables:

Correct. And what's cool about it for our contractors? Because everyone's busy, they're able to bring their clients in or they can just send them in and meet with our sales team. So for the majority of the time, I would tell you, they send their customers in. Our sales people do the sell for them.

Dave Ables:

So we walk through, we show them all the doors, the millwork, the interior exterior doors, shingles, fascia, soffit all those things are on display, built into these homes, and then we write down what profiles they want, we write down what qualities they want, what colors they want and we send that back to the contractor. If there's any change order that needs to be done from what they had originally specced, the contractor handles it. So it's really been an extension of their sales force that we've become and I think the homeowners like it. And, to be quite honest, my guys and my gals are experts at selling building materials and sometimes the contractor is not. So it really works better and it's to everyone's advantage. And we're in this together, we're a partnership, and that's what's really worked well for us.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I want to double click on that because I think Something you're doing very well that is really important is you're reducing friction for your customer, who's the contractor most of the time. You're making their life easier. You're helping them not have to learn that stuff, not have to take their time, and you're also helping them upsell, which, if they're doing cost plus, which a lot of these contractors are, and you're in a higher end area, they're making more money because you're helping sell the better product, which is also better for the home long-term and better for the homeowner. How do you see, like, what do your contractors say about that? Do they? Do they tell you how important that is to them?

Dave Ables:

I think. Well, that's part of what. Not only did Steve come up with the design, but that was what drove our decision to do these things, was that's what the contractors wanted. So when I bought the yard, I probably met with all of our contractors, but focused primarily on the top 25. And I said what can we do to better service you? And that was one of the things that they said. And ideally, in this new facility that we're building there, we'll then have kitchens and we'll have baths and we'll have flooring. We'll have all the things they don't. What they really want is a one-stop shop.

Dave Ables:

If you think about it, and you and I are married and we're going to go look for our doors and millwork, but then we got to go look for our flooring, so we got to drive 30 miles to a different store, and then we're going to go look for our bathroom. We got to drive another 15 miles to another store. This will all be housed on one nine-'m. Again, you and I are going to build a new home. We're interviewing builders and these builders are saying look, we're going to partner with one location. You're going to go in, you're going to pick all your materials out. That's even less stress on them on the back end, after the home is built, if there's a problem, there's only one person to come to. We don't have to go to this guy who sold me the flooring but he's no longer in business and blah, blah blah. So it's really worked to everyone's advantage and I think it's well received.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, and you pay one bill and you have one, probably one person that you know you can call that's going to answer the phone. Right, how important is it for you to have a team of people? You talked about your team, or experts. How important is that to have your people be experts in their individual field, whether it's windows, doors, lumber, whatever they're doing, and actually understand construction?

Dave Ables:

I think it's very important, and so we are pivoting a little bit. You know, originally Tri-County started out in 2001, and they built up until I bought it in 24, and we've grown even since then. So originally it's your cradle to grave, right. I sell everything. I know a little bit about everything, but not a lot about everything. And now we're starting to focus on we brought a millwork person in from one of the big millwork companies. We've brought in people that are experts in certain areas.

Dave Ables:

My son, sam, primarily focuses on deck sales. You want to talk about decking, whether it be a $250,000 outdoor space that's on one of the lakes or whether it's a $15,000 deck behind your home, this guy knows everything about those products and he knows it across all lines. Whether it's timber, tech, treks, decorators, they know all about the different options and I think that's really suited as well. And then we still have the old school cradle to grave guys, but they're now starting to pivot too. So when you have a true millwork question, let me go grab steve. Yeah, steve's going to come in. He spent 12 years at a door manufacturer and he's going to tell you the differentiations between this therma true door and a buyer built door yeah, it's very interesting that that's happening, because there's just so many doors is my background for sure.

Stefanie Couch:

There are thousands of configurations, different brands, like you mentioned, and also there's a lot of stakes that could go wrong. If you pick the wrong hand or if you do the wrong thing, it could be a whole door order that gets you know, brought back and contractors get really scared by that. So knowing that you as the person in the store really do know what you're talking about, that gives them so much peace of mind that when that shows up on their job site it's going to be the right thing and that's a big deal.

Dave Ables:

And then I think also doors, millwork and windows are susceptible to damage, and we do that really well. So we have an entire warehouse that's set up for doors, windows, loading dock, to each one set in an individual location. We just brought a second truck. We're outfitting the inside of the truck to be able to protect these things. So there's a lot to be said for it Aside from just picking it out. Now it has to come from the manufacturer to us, from us to your job site, from our truck to inside the job site, and we've got to do that flawlessly. You don't want to spend $7,000 on a front door to have it be scratched.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah exactly.

Dave Ables:

So those are the things that I think we do really well and we take pride in it. Now we also went to a technology standpoint where when it comes off the truck, we take a picture of it. When we put it into our racking outside, when we load it onto our truck, we take another picture of it. And now when we unload it at the job site, we take a third picture of it. And, job site, we take a third picture of it. And then those automatically are uploaded into the order itself in our POS system. So, as an example, if you as a contractor, once it's delivered, the picture's in there, we can send that picture directly to you as a contractor. Nonetheless, it's in the order. So if you were to call your salesperson and say, hey, I think there might've been a problem with this door, we can go in there and take a look at it. We can make sure there is or isn't. Ideally there's not, but if there was and we did something, we're going to own that. Yeah, for sure.

Stefanie Couch:

Customer service is the only way to keep contractors happy, knowing like when you do screw something up, and inevitably it's going to happen you're going to make it right. And if you own it and then make it right quickly, they'll be usually customers for a long time.

Dave Ables:

It also helps them and I met with one of our contractors last week and we were talking about the new system and he said this is a game changer for him from the perspective of working with his own team. Typically in life if something goes wrong, you're always going to say the other guy did it right. So it might be that they said, well, it came that way and it didn't really come that way, and now we can show that contractor so he can go back then and change his process. Before, if they always think it's me or we always think it's the manufacturer, they never changed that process. That really did the damage. So now we're all partnering together. It's not a finger-pointing game. It's that we want this to be right for our end consumer, which is the homeowner or the home builder.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, that's right. Happy customer. That's, at the end, is what we all want for sure. You actually did not come from this industry. You're industry adjacent. You're in the logistics industry. What made you want to buy a lumberyard and a hardware store? Why did you get into this industry? Because I think there's a lot of people out there thinking I would love to have a business, I would love to have a legacy for my family, for my sons, my daughters. What made you choose this?

Dave Ables:

Well, for me, probably different than some, it was probably eight corporate moves over the 28 years that I was in trucking and I wanted to give my children an opportunity to ground themselves. So my oldest son, david, who's the manager at our Big Lake store, 24 years old now but during high school back to kindergarten, probably was in six different schools. So I wanted to put my sons in a position to where they didn't have to do what dad did. Right, they didn't have to move around the country. They're all part of the businesses. They're going to have their families there. Sam, my 21 year old, just moved out and moved in with his girlfriend. They can now do the things that we didn't do.

Dave Ables:

As soon as we would solidify ourselves in one city or one state or be there for a period of time and they got their group of friends, I'd get that call to go to the next opportunity or even for the same company to the next location, and then we would have to move and I didn't want them to do that. And then I thought lumber, building materials. My family from Iowa, they're in the plumbing business. Growing up through college I went and I worked at the plumbing company in the summertime. So I thought it's just a natural fit. We're all workers, we have a car collection, we liked hardware. We bought our first store in 2013 in Ohio and that was again a corporate move caused us to have to sell that in 2019. And I think it was just the right thing for my family and luckily, the boys embraced it now and they all work in the businesses and they're doing well. Sam had his best month ever last month at 21 years old, selling decking, and I'm so proud of them all.

Stefanie Couch:

That's amazing, yeah, and I love how you're letting them do their own. They each kind of have their own thing they're owning in the business, which is really cool, because then they don't feel like mom and dad just gave it to them. They're actually earning it, which is it was a big deal for me when I felt like I wasn't just dad's daughter that was running the hardware store, the lumber yard. I feel like I actually had value to contribute. That's always important as a family business.

Dave Ables:

They had to start at the bottom. So, Nicholas, who's 19, just started at our yard, maybe six months ago. He delivers doors and windows right. So he's out there and he tells me some days dad, that was tough, I delivered 44 doors today.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah.

Dave Ables:

And there's a lot of manual labor involved. It is hard, but it also gives them street cred, right With the guys that have been there for 20 some years. They're not. It's not daddy's little boy that got to come in and take the business over. These guys started out on the yard.

Dave Ables:

My son, david, who works with my wife Lori similar situation. He started back in 2013 as a young, young, young man working in the store. That kids all did and he learned about the business. That kid at 24 knows more than most men that are my age at 56 about what's in that store, how to utilize what's in that store, and we can do that on any budget. There's many different ways to fix something right and it all fits into that individual's budget. Now we could say here's the exact right way and this is a hundred dollars sale. Some people don't have that a hundred dollars, but they still need that fixed. We're able to be able to pivot and get them what they can get within their budget and able to do that, and that's something I'm really proud of my son for being able to do.

Stefanie Couch:

That's awesome. Well, tell me a little bit about you've been working with True Value on the hardware side. I know True Value's had a rocky last few years, right, and now they've been purchased by Do it Best group. You actually have Do it Best in your lumber yard, so you guys do True Value and Do it Best. Tell me about your experience of that. And you've been pretty vocal on social media about the acquisition with True Value and all of those things. So tell me a little bit about what your experience has been like with that partnership.

Dave Ables:

Great people on both sides and now it's one side right. We obviously started with True Value in 2013. So I've got loyalty to that brand, but Do it Best does lumber better right. So we were able to have the best of both worlds. So when they went through this transaction, the True Value store was already True Value and I was actually already Do it Best, so we were able to get Lori product from the Do it Best side when True Value couldn't provide product until Do it Best righted that ship, which they've done a very good job and are doing well now. So we were lucky enough to be able to do that. But I think it's a positive and I think, in talking with Dent this week and talking with the do it best team, where they're going is the right direction. And so if you're a member or if you're a retailer and at some point it will become a co-op again and everybody's a member you'll be able to pick your brand, you'll be able to pick your source and you'll be able to do things which other co-ops can't do.

Stefanie Couch:

So you could offer multiple different things. Yeah, I love that. How does having something like a big company co-op that is very large, has a lot of buying power, has a lot of marketing support, all the different support systems that they have how does that help you have leverage in your independent businesses?

Dave Ables:

Well, if we look at it solely on the Tri-County side, so it was an independent yard for 24 years before I purchased it and they bought from a lot of really, really good local vendors.

Dave Ables:

But now I've partnered with Do it Best, with the buying power of thousands of stores, so I can buy material at a lower cost point, which then means I can make the same margin that I used to make and sell it to that end contractor or consumer at a lower price point. What now makes me competitive with the big private equity yards. So one of the things that's happened in our industry is this independent, this dream of a family business. It's diminishing, it's not gone right and hopefully we can revitalize that with things like a co-op. But it's really hard for a guy with one store to compete with Kodiak, as an example Not picking on Kodiak, because if I were they I'd probably be doing the same thing. But those are the type of things we're up against and do it best, true values and co-ops allow you to be able to compete with those people at the same level, make the same level of profit, provide the same level of service to your customer and it's really a good win-win for everyone.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I think it's the only way the independent business stays in and in the game, and I think that the bigger you know if you expanded and you had two or three stores, it's still that's almost the only way that you can really get those up and going is with help of programs and merchandising and all those things that they do. So I think it's a huge level up. I know from experience how hard it is to be one store competing against giants.

Dave Ables:

Right, and even with just having the two locations now and one's true value and one's do it best, we pivot and change, send merchandise back and forth all the time, but a lot of like skews between the two different brands right. I mean, a Milwaukee tool is a Milwaukee tool, no matter where you got it from. So the positive is that if someone comes into Lori's store and needs something and they don't have it, we have eight delivery trucks going all over the cities all day long. We can have that product over to her the same day and vice versa. So that's really what has helped us. I get it.

Dave Ables:

Originally we were one store. It's very difficult. You get aged merchandise that may not be selling well in your store. You got no place to put it other than to discount it many times below your cost. What might not sell in Big Lake may be a great seller in Clearwater. So we're able to move those things around and as we continue to scale this thing and add more locations, it will give us even more versatility to be able to meet the consumer's needs.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah Well, you're a very smart businessman and you are hungry and I knew that from the moment I met you. We started talking about that and I'm curious what are your thoughts about growth and how do you see Tri, three Suns and Tri-County in the future growing?

Dave Ables:

Well, we're putting up this new 25,000 square foot place at Tri-County right now, which will then give us the home center environment, and then we're looking at new acquisitions. On Saturday I'll be in northern Minnesota looking at an opportunity and we've sat down with Do it Best, true Value, targeted kind of a hundred mile radius. There's a lot of good yards in the cities and I'm friends with them and I've always said this. There's enough to go around. We don't have to be enemies. We all share data and that's what I think is really good. There was a post today from Adam Gunnett and I added on to that that we share intel, right, I mean, especially in meetings like this, people from all across the country. It's not like we're truly competitors, but like this, people from all across the country, it's not like we're truly competitors, but when we do better, they do better. So we're targeting a hundred mile radius from really I-94 north.

Dave Ables:

I like small towns. We grew up in Iowa where we've lived in most of the places, even throughout my corporate career was. I had a job in a city but we lived in the in the rural areas. We live outside on town on an acreage, so we're focused on those areas. We're focused on underserviced markets. We want to be able to take those small mom and pop stores, put some lumber in them, upgrade them, refresh them and give that community what they deserve. Really, it's all about the community. And then when we take care of the community, it takes care of my family and not only my family, my family's extended we talked about this this morning. So I have 22 employees at Tri-County and Lori has 10. There's 32 families that rely on our business to succeed or they fail, and it's a thing that it's tough to burden sometimes when things aren't going right, because it's not just us. But when things are going well, we all thrive.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, and it's really important, though, to see how much you are changing so many lives in the community and as you continue to do this, they change their life because of the work that you're giving them, that they do, and then maybe their kids have worked there all those cool things that you see in these local businesses so you're really making a difference and I'm excited to keep watching you because I feel that fire. I love watching you on LinkedIn, so let's talk a little bit about LinkedIn and branding and how you feel about marketing. So marketing has kind of become a dirty word sometimes in a lot of our traditional businesses, because it's a waste of time and money and all those things and they don't see the value. But you post on LinkedIn a lot and I know you believe in marketing, so tell me a little bit about that and how you feel like it can impact someone's business.

Dave Ables:

I think LinkedIn is a great tool. Now many people like Facebook, many people like Instagram, and as we scale and we add people to be able to do those things, we'll be on all those different avenues. But today I'm a LinkedIn guy, right, I don't have a Facebook account, but it's worked well for me and I mentioned this on an LBM Journal interview a few weeks ago but that was my artificial intelligence before there was AI, yeah, so, no matter what the situation, I could get an answer from someone throughout the country, and it really still prevails today. And when we put on things about what we're doing at our businesses, the direct messages, I get back the feedback from the community. No matter where I go, people say hey, I see you on LinkedIn and I love what you guys are doing. I mean that it is.

Dave Ables:

I don't have to pay for any of that, and it's true, and I enjoy it too, because I'm helping somebody else. If I can give somebody else an idea, whether they're in Minnesota or Iowa or Wisconsin, I think it's a win for our industry as a whole. And again, I'm about independence, right, so I want us to thrive and I want that American dream to live on. I don't want it to be where I have to go to work for a big corporation and be like Dave Ables used to be and move eight times and change my kids' locations all the time. Let people have that American dream of starting their own business. Linkedin is a format that can help you do that.

Stefanie Couch:

I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I am really excited to keep watching you and Lori just crush it, and I'm really excited to keep watching you and Lori just crush it, and obviously your son's coming into the business and doing the same thing. I would love to get up to Minnesota and see your store, because I know you've got an amazing showroom now. It sounds like you're building on fast. So thank you so much and we appreciate you spending some time with us.

Stefanie Couch:

Thank, you very much for having me. Thank you for listening to the Grit Blueprint podcast. If this episode helped you think a little differently about how to show up, share it with someone in your building world who needs it. If you're ready to turn visibility into growth, then head to gritblueprintcom to learn more and book a call to talk to us about your growth strategy. Until next time, stay unmistakable.

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