No place like Home

f-'l eorr Hnle rlvosr ended up ped\IOting potato chips. Instead. as head of Home Lumber, Whitewater, Wi., he recently took home an award as Wisconsin's Small Family Business of the Year. He's part of the fourth generation to run the operation since its start in 1885 as a speck on the map (pop. 11,000) in the midst of southwestern Wisconsin's old-growth timber and the mills it spawned.

Geoff started in as a kid in the yard that his dad, like his own father before him, had poured his life into-a kid small enough to weasel his way into a jam-packed boxcar in the stifling heat of summer and toss out 2x4s, one at a time. Not a kid's dream career.

CONCRETE DIRECTION: Geoff Hale's Home Lumber recentlv won the Wisconsin Small Familv Business of the Year Award. Here he points out "We Moved the Cheese" that employees carved intir the concrete foundation of its warehouse, a tribute to the change-embracing briok'Who Moved My Cheese? Also engraved are two other best-sellers that inspired the troops-Hrgh Five and Gung Ho.

So, after college, when he got an offer from Frito-Lay to turn his talents to potato chips, he bought a new suit, new car, and cleaned out his room. But the day before he was to hit the road, his dad's partner did just thatsmashed himself up in a car accident. Rather than leave Dad without a partner, Geoff stuck it out.

Six months later, Frito-Lay proffered another opportunity and, again, Geoff started packing. This time, a shady lumber distributor in Madison was set up to buy the operation and leave Dad to run it, with no say-so or skin in the game. That wasn't going to happen, Geoff declared. He helped Dad secure the necessary funding to buy the place, chanting, "We can do this!"-a war cry that's taken Home, under Geoff, into many a first, best, most... by jumping out of the box and over his depth and into one success after another.

That first year officially together, 1975, business skyrocketed 5O7o as Geoff reinvented Home's marketing approach. "Dad was a soft-spoken man," recounts his son. "I'm more aggressive. I basically went out and asked for business."

Fine. Until, all too quickly, the recession of the '80s handed these folks three tough years. "But, as lumber prices bottomed, I saw a window of opportunity and jumped on board. I bought carloads of lumber at that low , figure so I could offer guaranteed pricing to the biggest builders in the area"-new customers who became Geoff's best buds.

Next, Geoff installed the state's first drive-through in 1982, the year

Home undertook another giant risk. Outgrowing its downtown site in 1967 , which had already once been rebuilt to be bigger, better (and honifically, burnt to the very ground just days before its grand opening-then, with the invaluable assistance of loyal locals, immediately rebuilt on the spot), Home once again declined the lure of the outskirts and re-upped its commitment to the city's business core. (Today a state-of-the-art, stand-alone Kitchen & Bath Showroom nearby draws even more shoppers-including a new clientele composed of keepers of the household purse, er, women-back to Main Street.)

Putting his money where his mouth is, Geoff has continued to spearhead Whitewater's future by driving recruitment of $7.6 million in new private investments, creating 102 jobs, adding 28 new businesses, and sponsoring over a dozen promotional events-all, let's add, in just four years.

Meanwhile, back at Home base, Geoff focused on power tools as the company's new thrust. "Any product we take on," he says, "we challenge ourselves to become number one in sales locally-then," he casually adds, "nationally."

True to his promise, Home became Makita's largest dealer, a fact noted by Money magazine, which, in 2003, duly recommended little ol' Home in little ol' Whitewater as "best place to buy power tools" In. The. Nation.

That's the kind of free advertising a company can only dream of. It led to "pallets lining our aisles for three or four months, needing packaging and labels," Geoff says. "We couldn't get them out the door fast enough. The phone kept ringing off the hook."

Home's computers were smoking, too, for the company also had launched the first-ever Internet shopping cart for tools. In fact, Geoff today predicts that by 2015,50Vo of Home's business will be driven by the Internet.

No sleeping at the drawing board here. Next, another new offspring, Aurora Deck Lighting, was born in 2000 as the company started manufacturing its patented solar line of low-voltage deck lighting systems. Why, you ask? So did I. As Geoff explains, sort of, "We're good at throwing mud at the wall. Sometimes it sticks. At trade shows, we ask customers what they'd like to see next"-a practice that invariably leads the Home team outside the box again-next, to Home Tops.

When a customer was stumped in his search for outsized finials, Home ended up buying a turning machine and one thing led to another. As Home Tops, it now markets 7,000 high-end wood products nationwide, going up against only one strong competitor, Nantucket Post Cap Co. of New Hampshire. Which Home then purchased. Which Geoff's son, Michael, turned around and now heads. Son Chris, another of the nine family members involved in the company, moved up from yard foreman to operations manager and sales. Son Mackenzie is working at receiving and delivery while a full-time college student.

On to pole barns, which Home started stocking as a way to reach new customers in these dicey times. Yet, Home stays boldly committed to trading with other independent lumber dealers. "When the v.p.s of the boxes come begging,I politely decline," he states.

Ask Geoff what he's most proud of and the answer he shoots back is, "My employees. We both hire and fire for attitude, and on the spot," he says. And that hiring process goes on whether there's a vacancy or not. (Even in these lean times, he just signed on a key staffer of a respected competitor who went out of business.) "We call the interviewing process 'The Gauntlet"'-another chuckle. During &tiHittg.Ptoductsom the courting process, a prospective hire has to go through 20 interview to make sure it's a love match on both parts. And, like Dorothy, flully 25Vo of employees who leave for "better opportunities" eventually return, after discovering that there's no place like Home.

Sure, they like the outfit's new profit-sharing plan that replaced the Christmas bonus (but not the raucous Christmas party-karaoke, anyone? Hula Hoop competition?) They value the open-book policy. They blossom under the family atmosphere, attending Brewers' games and sledding jamborees as guests of the owners. They flourish with empowerment. And they know that this is a level playing field: A family member must create his or her own opportunities, working from the ground floor up, reporting, by design, to a non-family supervisor. ("Fewer problems; you're insulated from animosity and nepotism. And," Geoff finds, "they learn better if it's not from their old man.") They wear company T-shirts that invoke, "Choose to Make A Difference." And to remind them of that option, Geoff sends every staffer a motivational email every single morning.

In the Home tradition, giving back to the community is a must, whether through donations of time and product to Habitat for Humanity or a Katrina fund or to a program that treats kids with critical illnesses to a Home Family Getaway. Mom made life a little zanier by manning the counter in her fright wig, red rubber nose and baggy suit (she was a professional clown). Dad, a.k.a. Mr. Whitewater, at 85 still works 35 hours a week and delivers meals on wheels in his time off.

Besides spearheading the revitalization of Whitewater's downtown, Geoff remains committed to the Midwest Lumbermen's Round Table, which he helped found in 1914.ln fact, he credits these sessions with his peers for Home's success. "Everyone's willing to share their thinking-better ways to do things. And I go in like a sponge."

Home's people also take on the fun, and challenge, of writing and performing in all its radio and TV spots. "That's the way you should do it," Geoff is convinced, buoyed by an avalanche of positive feedback from customers. (The radio show is the most-listened to home improvement program in the country. But you probably already suspected that.)

While the building scene is hardly rosy during our ongoing economic plague, Home keeps well ahead of the repo squad by outdistancing the competition. And how's that done? Simple. Quality products, unsurpassed service. "Under-promise, over-deliver" is the game plan fueling Geoff's ambitious goal: "We want to be the Nordstrom's of lumberyards."

Although lumber sales have been slim and margins even skinnier, the company's other divisions can boast healthy balance sheets. Sales are up 25Vo. "We're above the ground for another day," Geoff jokes. "And that's all we're looking for. With our culture, we can turn on a dime. We've quoted as much in the past 60 days as in the past 18 months. There's a light at the end of the tunnel."

Carla Waldemar cwaldemar@ comcast.net

By fames Olan Hutcheson