The Business Magazine’s “Risking It All“ section highlights the entrepreneurs who took risks and made sacrifices to build their businesses in our region. This month, we sat down with Dan Brownlee, owner of Brownlee Lumber Company in Brookville, Pennsylvania, which is celebrating its 40th year in 2013, to talk about the challenges and opportunities of running a family owned business in the current economy.
A lot can happen in 40 years.
When Dan Brownlee and his brother Charles gave up farming and purchased a log skidder and truck to start Brownlee Lumber Company in 1973, things were certainly different.
The lumber industry and new construction were booming.
And capital was easier to come by, allowing the company, which began as a logging contractor for area sawmills, to further expand with the addition of its own sawmill in 1978.
The business, says Dan Brownlee, now the sole owner of Brownlee Lumber, “seemed to be a natural fit and a natural progression for us. It was a whole lot easier back then to take a couple of hard-working guys with a small amount of working capital and make something happen.”
Fast forward four decades. After a housing-led global recession and the slow recovery that followed, the environment in which Brownlee Lumber competes has changed dramatically.
“Two-thirds of what we do ends up in a house,“ says Brownlee. “As an industry, we’re producing about half of what we produced before the crash.“
Despite the downturn, what hasn’t changed is the entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic that guided Brownlee from its humble hardwood lumber beginnings to a force
in the industry.
Key to the company’s success are the combined efforts of many, including its valued 35 full-time employees, which includes three of Brownlee’s four adult children; customers who are seen as partners; the community in which the business operates; and long-term associations based on fairness, mutual trust, integrity and accountability.
“For those of us in the industry that are left standing, margins are slim, and the competition is difficult,“ Brownlee says. “But the ones that are left are the ones who were most competitive and best positioned — that’s why we survived.“
And though the challenges now are greater, so too are the opportunities.
“Owning your own business these days is so much more capital intensive. It’s more difficult to get capital, and regulations are more difficult,“ notes Brownlee. “But we’ve spent a lot of money these past few years updating and modernizing everything, improving our productivity. We’ve sat down and selectively picked off projects that had to be done to make us more efficient. And it’s allowed us to see success. We even set a new production record for the company this year.“
Whether in 1973 or 2013, Brownlee has found fulfillment in the family owned business.
“We’ve poured ourselves into the company. And you get back what you put in,“ he says.
It’s that same entrepreneurial spirit and solid work ethic that have set the company apart
for four decades — and made Brownlee a name for exceptional value in hardwood.
For more information about Brownlee Lumber Company, visit www.brownleelumber.com.
