News
| Cowls to Shut Down Manufacturing Division in 2010 | 2009-12-17 |
For Immediate Release: December 16, 2009 Contact: Cinda Jones, W. D. Cowls, Inc: 413-575-2900; Evan Jones, Cowls Building Supply, Inc: 413-549-1403
Amherst, MA: Citing diminished customer demand for custom sawn lumber, W. D. Cowls, Inc., will close its sawmill, one of its four divisions, effective in January 2010. Future focus of the 9th generation family business will be on W. D. Cowls’ timberland & real estate management divisions; and on Cowls Building Supply’s retail lumberyard and design showroom.
“The reason why our family business has survived nine generations is because we have innovated and evolved in response to changing markets” said Evan Jones, who manages Cowls Building Supply. “In 2009, we expanded our flooring department and grew our window and door sales team in response to market opportunities. These initiatives have been successful. However, lack of customer demand for sawmill products requires us to make a tough decision about our long time unprofitable manufacturing division at W. D. Cowls.”
Cowls’ core business, since 1741, has been sustainably managing timberland in western Massachusetts from its “home farm” in North Amherst. Over the past 268 years the family has built numerous decades-lasting business enterprises on the home farm where the sawmill sits today. These have included onion, corn, tobacco and potato farms. Large sheep and dairy farms thrived on the home farm site as recently as the 1960s. Other generational Cowls businesses of note included building and operating the rock crushing facility at the notch, which was in a previous generation sold to Lane Construction. Cowls helped build Amherst’s street railway by cutting timbers on portable mills in the woods and filling the rail beds with its crushed rocks.
“Gramp moved our woods-based milling operations to the home farm in the 1940s when electricity made this possible” says Cinda Jones, President of W. D. Cowls, Inc. That mill was struck by lightning in 2002. “We rebuilt with a lot of debt; the economy went south; alternative materials have become more appealing to our customers; and this manufacturing enterprise is no longer feasible for us.”
In 1980 Paul Jones built Cowls Building Supply – the thriving building materials store. When the retail store opened, over 70% of what the sawmill produced was sold at the store. Today only 20% goes there. “Customers of Cowls Building Supply shouldn’t notice any change in our product availability,” says Evan. “The sawmill is no longer in the back yard, but we have relationships with several nearby mills that can seamlessly custom cut timbers and lumber for all the orders we receive.”
“It’s a sad day for my brother and me to have to end our family lumber manufacturing legacy,” said Cinda Jones, a well known advocate for shopping local. “It’s not a good sign of the Massachusetts economy and global trends when energy, labor, and competing material costs make it impossible for this small mill to survive any longer” she said. “The fact is that we can sell our logs for nearly as much as we can sell our lumber and timbers. As a timberland manager, being in the sawmill business in Amherst just doesn’t make sense for us anymore.”
“On the upside,” says Cinda Jones, “family businesses have to innovate and change over time to survive and thrive, and we’re excited about our future. This is not a story about a business closing. It’s about a business evolving.”
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