EDITORIAL

Need for Communicolion

OW OFTEN in recent vears have we heard someone, everyone-decry the lack of communications between difierent sections of the forest products industry?

Countless speeches on this subject have been made at conventions. Countless promises to do something. There has even been some progress. A few individual manufacturers have developed programs to reach the consumer, either directly or through Wood Marketing, Inc. Some have directed their trade associations to do the job-and even cooperate with others to eliminate duplication. These stirrings are heartening.

Now, from way down near the end of the line, comes an authoritative voice. "Come meet with me,t' it says. "Come sit dorn with me in northern Cali fornia, where I sell a lot of products. Come find out whether all those promotion and marketing plans you make back there at the factory are really working where the dollars are spealt. Come advise me on how we can do a better job for each other."

The occasion was the recent meeting staged in San Francisco by the Lumber Merchants Association of Northern California. See page 43 of this issue for Bob McBrien's comments on the meeting.

Here's that forgotten man-1hs retailer-asking manufacturers and distributors of (l) lumber, (2) plywood and doors, (3) building products and (4) hardware, paints and garden supplies to sit on an advisory board to their own marketing and distribution committee.

The object: to feed back from the market place information that will enable suppliers to understand better the retailer's and consumer's problems, and thus find more practical ways to get a bigger share of the disposable dollar for building products.

Here is a group that has laken action towards better understanding of industry's problems. Success they will have, for they have recognized that information must flow back from the market place to the source. We would like to see this idea spread nationwide via regional associations everywhere. This is the key step on the road to profits.

Communication! And How!

ln This lssue

fN THIS issue we are especially pleased to present I two stories about dealers in the depressed southern California area that effectively refute the gloom and doom stories you have heard to the efiect that business is hopeless.

One is a story of a new yard that is opening with two young men at the helm, the other concerns an established operation that is expanding under a seasoned crew. The two stories, (see pages eight and fourteen) should be ample proof that the crepe hanger's day has yet to corne.

Which is not to say that all is rosy, far from it. Our story in the June issue (see CLM, June, starting page six) that told of the rash of retail yard closings was the hard, factual truth, unpleasant as it may have been.

But in most of those cases, there seems to have been an undue reliance on the premise that the building boom could go on in the glorious style of 1963 when the area had its record year for both single family and multi family starts.

We think the two dealers in this issue are the ones on the right path. It's pretty hard to argue with that ten percent net profit figure quoted by dealer Norb Bundschu.