I was fortunate last week to get to see many of our valued customers in the Dallas TX area. While none were as busy as they wanted to be, most noted steady Alder sales that reflect the current slower new housing markets. The following observations relate to this year (can you believe June 1st is this week?) and beyond as Cascade is always looking to move the ball forward.
1. Mills delivering ripped lumber is becoming more and more commonplace. While a lot of distributors have put in their own rip and planing lines, others have resisted adding the required space and overhead. In addition, several with “in-house” operations were open to saving on the freight by buying rips made directly in the mills. With it nearly the 1st of June, summer is here, and the end of the year is right around the corner. At Cascade, we are looking at adding the expanded ability to gang rip, straight line rip, plane, and process Alder, which would support our broadly accepted width sort offerings. We have posted a short online questionnaire on value-added manufacturing and would appreciate your taking the 2 minutes it would take to fill out the survey. In return, we will be giving away to one lucky respondent Cascade swag every week, including stainless steel cups, pullovers, shirts, and other fun stuff. To access our “Cascade Future” survey, please click HERE
2. Fixed widths and rips are playing a larger part in the 5-piece cabinet door world we are in. At business after business, we discussed the best ways to optimize rip yields, sorting random lumber to width and even manufacturing to desired widths where gang rip saws are outputting 2 or 3 pieces with just sawdust as the residual. Manufacturers are looking for every advantage they can get to compete with HDF and MDF doors and are looking at every way they can enhance recovery and improve productivity.
3. Alder has a great future, but we need to promote its versatility. We are looking at making available sample kits of 12” x 12” Alder shaker doors, finished in today’s colors with greys, greens, and blues, plus wood tones that mesh the designer colors being used with translucent finishes, showing the beauty of the Alder woodgrain in both clear and knotty looks. Please let us know if you are interested in having small, easily handled Alder door sample kits for your salespeople to use in selling Cascade Alder. The survey covers the door sample kit idea. Help us get you what you need.
4. It seemed every distributor we visited mentioned some difficulty in getting the Alder plywood they needed, especially in 4’ x 10’. We are interested in helping solve this problem for as many of our customers as possible. In the survey, there are 2 questions on plywood that might help us determine the scope of this market and what we need to do to help.
Overall, it was a great trip, as Cascade’s sales team remains committed to seeing our customers in person as often as possible. There just is no substitute for seeing our products used in manufacturing and talking with our customers and their customers about the challenges they face. We look forward to seeing as many of you as we can and our doors are always open if you want to come see our mills and discuss opportunities with us.
