Annuql Plywood Meeting Aims qt Mqking Product More Profitoble to Hcrndle, Eosier to Sell

Can the western fir plywood industry increase sales despite the fact that its productive capacity has temporarily outrun demand ? Some 250 frr plywood manufacturers from Washington, Oregon and California faced up to this challengc at their 18th annual meeting in Gearhart, Ore., June 7 and 8.

If the meeting is.any indication of things to come, sales should not only expand but fir plywood should be more profitable to handle and easier to sell in the future than it has at any time in recent years.

Speaking before the leading figures in the 97-factory industry, Reno Odlin, outstanding Northwest businessman and president of Tacoma's Puget Sound National Bank, urged a program of teamwork between manufacturing and distributing elements in the marketing picture. He declared that this is the kev to full exploitation of the industry's outstanding sales promotion campaigns.

$2,000,000 to Broaden Plywood Markets

\V. E. Difford, managing director of the Douglas Fir Plywood Association, and other industry speakers amplified the latter statement, outlining details of a 1954 plywood sales promotion in which the manufacturers are investing a total of more than $2,000,000 in an effort to broaden plywood markets.

After reviewing the national outlook and the current unsettled condition of the market for plywood, Mr. Odlin said:

"You must devise and develop a distribution pattern that will r,vin friends and enlist their help in selling your products. You can't do it with 49 price changes over a period of months or even a few years."

A,cknowledging that he is an "incurable optimist," Mr. Odlin said:

"Your major problem is one of getting teamwork between production and sales elements. They need to work together to develop the long-term potential for plywood. I think it can be done."

Mr. Odlin urged on the manufacturers a six-point program of action : 1. Develop an orderly pattern of disbution. 2. Exercise common sense and goodwill in handling your individual sales problems. 3. Develop price policies that will build up the customer's confidence and enable him to plan his plywood purchases on a businesslike basis. 4.. Strive for greater efficiency in the plant to lower costs and improve quality. 5. Increase plywood promotion to spark greater consumption of plywood products in all markets. 6. Develop statesmanlike business leadership capable of constructive solutions to your problems.

In his keynote address, Eberly Thompson, re-elected president of the l)ouglas Fir Plywood Association and executive vice president of M and M Wood Working Co., Portland, Ore., urged more efficient selling programs, better distribution policies, and quality improvement, saying:

"It's time to get more spring in our legs, there are high but not insurmountable hurdles ahead."

He pointed out that sales in 1954 are outrunning last year's record high by 6 per cent and nearly three times that of 1916. However, he cautioned that the industry is still growing and announced that 10 new plants have come into the picture in the past 12 months. Thompson emphasized that despite the fact that the industry jumped sales in 1953 by 20 per cent or about 10,000,000 square feet a rveek, production and demand are still out of balance.

He said tire proposed franchise plans betr.r,-een manufacturers and distributors may have merit as they strengthen the selling team and put a premium on cooperative merchandising and more intensive selling.

Mr. Thompson also warned that there is a growing tendency to "legislate plywood markets out of existence" and he urged the manufacturers individually and through their trade association to fight for sensible building codes that fully recognize plywood's structural advantages.

Supporting other speakers' advocacy of more intensiye plywood sales promotion, Mr. Difford, managing director of the association, announced that in the last half of 1954, industry advertising and promotion will be aimed directly at the end-user and specifier, such as builders and architects, with increasing emphasis on volume markets for plywood in homes and commercial construction. The program is intended, he said, to create end-of-the- line orders.

Mr. Difford reviewed basic sales philosophy behind the industry's trade association program, which he said is founded in the high quality of the glue-line in fir plywood. Pointing out that industry grade-marks are the only positive identification of quality, he said that Plyscord sales last year were better than 750,000,000 square feet. approximately triple what they were four years ago. He said that without customer confidence in the product due to promotion of the grade-marks, this market increase ll'ould not have been anywhere near as significant.

E. W. Daniels, chairman of the association's management committee and past president of Harbor Plywood Corp., Aberdeen, Wash., announced that in 1954 fir plywood advertising will make 475,000,000 impressions and that a field force doubled in size will make 24,000 salebuilding calls on architects, builders, industrial buyers and other specifiers.

New Projects for Do-It-Yourself

About 50 new plans for fir plyu'ood projects are being developed, he said, in an effort to capitalize fully on the cresting do-it-yourself movement, which he described as the biggest marketing development since the advent of the self-service grocery store.

C. E. Devlin, managing director of the National Plywood Distributors Association, announced that distributors handling 60 per cent of fir plyrvood sales at the wholesale level "are determined to .rvork u'ith the manufacturers" in the search for more efficient sales and distribution policies. Mr. Devlin announced that the NPDA will ofier individual

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