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Board Meeting: Ninth Generation Leads Historic Amherst Lumber Company
By Simons, David
Publication: BusinessWest
Date: Saturday, June 1, 2002
Assuming control of a longstanding family-owned business has its distinct advantages, including a building clientele and a solid reputation within the community. On the other hand, once the heirs-apparent get a good look at the world outside, coming home to mind the store isn't always the most appealing prospect.
Becoming the latest in a long tine of family proprietors at Cowls Building Supply in North Amherst wasn't always in the cards for siblings Cinda and Evan Jones. After spending their formative years sweeping floors and sorting nails under the employ of their dad, Paul Jones, it was time to search for greener pastures.
"We both left the area to attend college," said Evan. who headed for Syracuse and eventually earned a degree in wood technology. "From there I went to work at a lumber yard in the Boston area. Obviously I liked the wood business, but at the time I had no intention of returning to the Valley and working for the family at Cowls."
That is, until he received a phone call one day in 1994, informing him that business back home was going through the roof - and there was a position waiting for him if he wanted it. "Once you get out there, you realize just how nice the Amherst area really is," said Jones. "At that point, it started to look like a really good thing. So I came back."
Following a four-year stint at Colby, Cinda relocated to Washington, D.C., where she, too, sought work in the wood industry. "After growing up in Western Mass., I really wanted to live in a big city," said Cinda. "And every year without fail, my dad would call up and say, 'you know, you really should come back and work here at Cowls; it'll be great.' In the meantime, I found myself applying for jobs and looking for opportunities that I realized were available through my own family's company - not to mention that I could learn a lot more on the job working at Cowls. Even though I loved Washington, I started to think that it would be fun to come back and be a part of the family again."
Last July, Cinda made the 500-mile trek back up I-95 to become Cowls' newest VP. "It's not like I always pictured myself working in a sawmill," she said, "but I knew I had what it takes to help my family business succeed. While I was still in Maine, I worked for the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine doing landowner relations, and then, when I went to D.C., I worked as the marketing director for the American Forest and Paper Association, which represents 80% of the country's manufacturing output for forest and paper products. All the jobs I've held have really prepared me to come back."
Logging On
Located on the original tract of farmland founded by Jonathan Cowls in 1741, the Cowls-Jones family sawmill/planer facility and retail-hardware establishment has its roots in the 19th century, when lumber milled by Walter Dickinson Cowls was used to provide railroad ties, posts, and poles for the Amherst-Sunderland Street Railway.
"For almost 200 years the family ran mini-mills out in the woods," says Evan. "Then in the 1940s, our grandfather built the sawmill-which made it possible to bring the trees to the mill for the first time, rather than the other way around."
Thanks to the business savvy of Cinda's father, Cowls reached new heights of prosperity during the '80s. "Our dad decided that just having the sawmill business alone didn't bring in nearly enough benefits for the amount of work involved," said Cinda. "So beginning in 1980, he brought in the retail part of the business - and now that's more successful than the sawmill. We're really proud of that."
Going forward, Cinda and Evan plan to maintain the integrity of the original company while cultivating new ideas for expanding Cowls' customer base. "For instance, we use the Internet to advertise [www.cowls.com]," said Cinda, "which has helped us serve customers outside of the area, especially since we're one of the only mills in the Northeast that can grade-stamp timbers. But at the same time, we're still using the same old timber-sizer in the sawmill that dates from around 1910! They just haven't improved on it. We have progressive ideas, but at the core, it's still very much a tradition-based business."
When it comes to cultivating its lumber supply, Cowls continues to take the slow road. "Our timberland business has been sustainably managed for hundreds of years," said Cinda. "We selectively harvest our trees, which means that every 10 years or so we go in and cut down the nastiestlooking trees so that the big ones can grow bigger and nicer - with the idea being that in 10 or 20 years we can come back and harvest really great-quality lumber."
A recent proposal that would bring a Home Depot to nearby Hadley is cause for concern - but not alarm. "Something like that is an obvious challenge," said Evan, "but it's what keeps us bringing in the quality lumber, making sure our customer service is up to par, and developing our customer base.
"We have a large contractor base, a good deal of commercial business form UMass, plus a very diverse assortment of retail customers," he continued. "As a result, we feel very wellinsulated - we're not going to lose half our business to a large competitor."
Even without the threat of direct competition, a business like Cowls has other potential adversaries. Cinda cites a recent proposal that would provide federal protection for the 117mile Metacomet Monadnock trail, a large portion of which runs through privately-owned land in Western Mass. including eight miles of Cowls-owned property.
"Our biggest threats are insects, forest disease - and the federal government, basically", said Cinda, who is currently spearheading an effort to turn back the initiative. "It's funny - I left Washington ... only to find that Washington was still here once I got back to Amherst!"
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