February 2023

Greetings Friends,

We are 1/12th of the way through 2023 already. This year I enter my 44th year of business working for myself. I started New England Country Woodworking in 1979 when I purchased a used Ford F-100 pickup, a few tools and set up shop in Manchester after meeting Roy Conyers, a very successful businessman and land owner. Roy passed away many years ago, but he was my first landlord, an early mentor and helped me get started in my early days. I still keep in contact and do a little work with his two sons Ron and Bob. A few years later I moved into an old mill complex, also in Manchester right next to the Hockanum River. I know many of my old-time customers remember that location. That mill has since been demolished. In 1990 I moved into the 24,000 s.f. building on Colonial Rd. in Manchester and changed the name of the company to Harris Enterprise Corporation and formed a DBA called Harris Woodworking. I was in that building for 18 years. Pretty much from the beginning I have sold hardwood lumber.

In 2003 I met a group of three businessmen who had been in business together before. I negotiated a deal and sold my company to them. In short, things did not work out well for me (or them) and the company closed in 2008. At the time I sold, we had about 40 employees and we were a union shop signatory to the local Carpenters Union. I had a 5-year contract to stay and manage the company for them. Late in 2005 they told me that they were going to stop selling lumber and focus on the custom woodworking part of the business. After some painful negotiating I purchased the hardwood lumber / retail portion of the business back from them and Parkerville Wood Products, inc. was born and started operations in 2006. Because I was still obligated to work for them at Harris Woodworking, I took on a partner that helped in the early stages of setting up Parkerville. I left my old company, Harris Woodworking in 2007 and joined Parkerville full time. A couple of years later I bought my partner out and he left the company.

So where are we today, and where are we planning to go? Last year Parkerville had some big changes with the formation of a new partnership which includes myself, my son Brendan and Mark Summers. Brendan has worked at Parkerville on and off since we opened in 2006 and full time since graduating from college in 2014. Mark Summers is an entrepreneur and serious woodworking hobbyist from Vernon who has been a customer of ours for many years. Mark liked our vision and future plans so he has joined our team and is supporting our goals to grow the company. We are working on some exciting new things. We have just acquired a 7500 s.f. building in downtown Manchester that will help facilitate our growth and some of the lumber we have recently purchased in MA. and VT. We continue to look for a larger (30-40,000 s.f.) building to further facilitate our growth and goals. Our intent is to broaden our selection of lumber, live edge slabs and boards, an S4S program in several species, more plywood and other related products. Also, to increase our mill capacity with the large double head planer that we purchased in The Woodery deal that I’ve mentioned in previous newsletters. I think as we become more efficient, we will be able to pass savings on to our customers. Our millwork / woodworking department continues to be busy with select projects. We are very particular on the types of work that we bid and who we work with. In addition to all our walk-in customers we have a relatively small group of good loyal commercial and high-end residential clients. We are very fortunate to have a great team here that keeps things rolling.

We’ll keep in touch and let you know when we start to transport more lumber from MA. and VT. There is some exceptional material there but we can’t sell it unless it’s here.

As always, thanks so much for business and supporting the families that work here at Parkerville.

I hope to see you at the shop.

Sincerely,

David Harris
President