Profile of a successful lumber start-up and its talented founder, Enita Nordeck.
To judge by the start-up of Unity Forest Products, there's nothing wrong with the lumber industry that flexible manufacturing, tight fiscal management, and great customer service -- or, as founder Enita Nordeck says, a dose of common sense -- can't cure
Enita Nordeck had no dreams of building a business. Unity Forest Products sprang into being through a blend of happenstance, fate, and pluck, all ignited by the sheer determination of three men who appeared on her doorstep one December day in 1987.
That fall Nordeck had left a job at Siskiyou Forest Products, a remanufacturing mill near Sacramento. Such mills buy lumber that the big tree-harvesting sawmills of the Pacific Northwest consider finished, to a point, and remanufacture the "blanks" into scores of different products. Unity's lines, for example, include exterior siding, paneling, barge rafters, fencing, and patterned specialty items. Unity sells to lumber retailers catering to builders, remodelers, and handy homeowners.
Siskiyou was a similar operation. In her three years as chief financial officer and general manager, the tireless, effervescent Nordeck had turned it from a loser into a highly profitable business. But frustrated by conflicts with the owner, she resigned. Her plans were vague. Her husband, Charley, was disabled and needed a knee replacement. They had just built a house and were still settling in. She was actually contemplating a salesclerk job at JC Penney.
But the three men, all colleagues of hers at Siskiyou, had other ideas. They too had just quit from there, unhappy with the management after Nordeck's departure. "They said they were going to sit on my porch until we decided to do something together," Nordeck recalls. "They weren't sure what it would be, but they knew that the four of us could make something happen."
Nordeck was intrigued. These three had been mainstays at Siskiyou. One was Til Johnson, a high-powered guy who could sell money to the mint. Another was Steve Hagen, a veteran salesman. He had grown up in redwood country, where his father ran a sawmill. The third was Mike Smith, a quietly intense mill-crew supervisor, certified lumber grader, and equipment expert. All were superb in their jobs and knew the lumber industry cold.
As did Nordeck. Then 42, she'd been in the field since age 17. A high school valedictorian, she'd had to turn down a scholarship to Stanford to support her ailing parents. She started as a sawmill clerk in Covelo, a tiny northern California community. From there she rose to controller at an Oregon sawmill, then to chief financial officer and general manager at Siskiyou, a $20-million operation. For much of that time, she was a single mother of four on top of everything else.
Lumber is a male-dominated field, however, and she felt her prospects were limited. But in Johnson, Hagen, and Smith, each of whom she liked and respected, there was the nucleus of a company. What they needed, they told her, was a team captain, someone with financial acumen to pull the pieces together. In short, they needed Nordeck, and she could not resist the challenge.
The idea of starting a business was "scary," she admits. It would be all-consuming. But in she plunged, with her eyes wide open. "I knew exactly what was involved," she says, "and it would be very tough."
But not impossible.
Today Unity Forest Products is thriving in an industry threatened by a severe shortage of raw material -- timber -- and depressed by a downturn in housing starts. Yet despite the volatility of the construction market, and the plight of the forestry field in general, the company has never had an unprofitable month.
Unity's steady success hinges on the hardscrabble values that created it. Its 38 employees work as if they're on fire. The company makes sure that profit centers are indeed profitable. It combines speed, fair pricing, a keen knowledge of its customers' needs, and an intense symbiosis between sales and manufacturing with a near-fanatical attention to financial detail. In short, Nordeck runs the company with tactics that are nothing less than revolutionary in the hidebound, unhurried lumber business.
Even her bankers are amazed. "What she has is a theory of inventory management and sales and marketing that hasn't really found its way into this industry yet," observes Dave Zuercher, a senior vice-president at Wells Fargo Bank's Sacramento branch. "It appears to me that Enita's approach is more profitable."
Every morning, five or six big trucks taking product to lumberyards all over California and beyond depart Unity's 10-acre plant, beside the Feather River in Yuba City, Calif., a community of 30,000 an hour north of Sacramento. Five or six more roll into Unity's yard bearing the raw lumber. In the mill itself, with its huge, thunderous machinery, the crew of 24 moves nimbly from one product to another with little downtime. It pushes out some 6 million board feet a month, placing Unity among the largest of the 50 or so lumber remanufacturers in the state.
The sales team, five strong, works the phones in a near-frenzy.
Nordeck herself tracks the cash flow in a way that would do the most tight-fisted bean counter proud. No detail, it seems, escapes her attention. But that's just one of her roles. She is the mastermind behind the operation, the chief executive, the mother superior, the financial planner, the counselor to her crew. According to her coffee mug, she's the "zookeeper," too. And five years ago, when Unity was an infant, she was the sawdust sweeper as well.
Even in the beginning, Nordeck and her three would-be partners were confident they could compete. Around her kitchen table, they roughed out a plan. And by the first week in January 1988, Unity Forest Products was an entity.
Nordeck liquidated everything to fund the early going. She sold her stocks and her new house, raising some $265,000. Smith sold his house, too, and contributed $30,000. Hagen weighed in with $22,000. Johnson had no assets, but Nordeck fronted him $15,000 so he could buy into the equity. "If I had to lend money so he could do it, that was fine," she says. "We were gambling everything, and I wanted a long-term commitment from all of us." She took 75% of the stock, and her three partners shared the rest.
To build and equip a remanufacturing plant, Nordeck figured she needed another $650,000. But banks didn't lend to start-ups with zero history. Unity needed a track record. A brokering operation offered an affordable way to establish one.
A small rented one-room office in Roseville, near Sacramento, served as headquarters. Unity bought lumber from sawmills, subcontracted out the resawing work, then wholesaled the goods to lumberyards. It made money right from the start.
