TW&J's Dual Marketing Function

WfHILE Tarter, Webster & Johnson is YY known to most western lumbermen as a sales company, to some 2@ sawmills in the Pacific Northwesl TW&J is better known as a buying organization.

As an outgrowth of it reputation, TU/&J customers many years ago started looking to this division as a source of wood products not manufactured by its associated sawmillsparticular species and specialty products, primarily.

These requests, and the subsequent need to develop additional sources of supply for the TW&J wholesale distribution yards (nine in California, one Arizona), resulted in establishing arbout 15 years ago an office in Redding, California to acquire the needed products from northern California, portions of Oregon and the coastal redwood region sources.

This activity has regularly expanded and two years ago was supplemented with the opening of a second buying office at Eugene, Oregon.

Virgil Mastelotto, a veteran of 15 years with TW&J, is in charge of the Redding buying office. He is assisted by Lowell Ambrosini who came to Redding in 1963 following four years at the TW&J distribution yard at Fresno.

The responsitbility of this office extends from all northern California, including coastal mills, through the timbered areas of eastern Oregon.

Bob Nielson, who joined TW&J upon opening of the Eugene office, purchases from the mills in western Oregon, the state of Washington and at times up into Canada.

All three find that much of their timehalf or moreis taken up in visits to inspect mills. To buy well it is necessary to have intimate knowledge of a sawmill's manufacturing capabilities, the type of logs being sawed, the availability of par' ticular grades and species. Consequendy major mill sources of supply are visited at least once a month; and over the course of a year perhaps a hundred or more saw' mill, plywood and remanufacturing plants are visited by one or more of these TW&J representatives,

The purchases they make for company distribution yards and customers will, on the average, exceed 200 million board feet a year.