April 2023

Greetings Friends,

I’m not sure how many of you are college basketball fans but March Madness goes into April. We will see if the UCONN men’s team can go all the way this year. The UCONN ladies had a good year but fell a bit short. That leaves Gino (and Jim Calhoun) to be there to help Dan Hurly navigate the chaos in Houston. They both know the routine well. It should be exciting for those who are into it. The final 4 teams play tonight (Sat.). The final is on Monday. Should be fun to watch. Go Huskies.

Finally, the 7500 s.f. building restoration project on Brainard Place in Manchester is moving forward. We have our building permit and have started cleaning up, putting in new doors, an electrical panel upgrade, new bathrooms, and other general code updates. We will not be operating there anytime very soon but it will allow us to start getting some of the lumber that we have out of state to CT. so that we can start selling some of our huge inventory. The premium walnut that we have in Manchester, VT. should be at our shop by the end of April.

Other inventory-related topics – We purchased about 2000 bf of live edge black walnut slabs from a private seller in CT. that we plan on having in house in a couple of weeks. The uniqueness of this batch is that there are some boards over 20’ long. Also some smaller pieces are ideal for floating shelves. We also have a new local vendor for live edge slabs and have recently brought in some beautiful ash, red oak, sycamore, and some nice spalted maple. We have another early lead on hardwood a dealer potentially nearing retirement. I plan to look at his extensive inventory sometime within the next few weeks. These deals can take a long time to culminate but usually, the benefits are worth it. In the past year since we’ve bought several collections of wood, we’ve found some real treasures. It allows us to provide our customers with a unique selection and variety not commonly found. Some are quite old and uncommon.

As mentioned in our March newsletter, we took part in the CT. Home Builders and Remodelers Association’s Home Show a couple of weeks ago that was at the Connecticut Convention Center. We met some of our customers there and made many new friends that have started to visit our shop. The show was successful and very well organized and promoted. I’m pleased that we joined their group and our team at Parkerville has become active in the organization. We’re happy to be able to serve the builders that belong to the group and serve our state. It’s a very supportive membership.

On our production side, we continue to be busy with good work. We are pretty selective on the type of work we bid on and produce and our team does a great job managing our workload. Equally important is the customer that we work for. We have a select group of repeat customers that provide the majority of our larger projects. Some of these projects take months or longer to produce from start to finish. Next month I will explain why it takes so long and how our trade (custom millwork) works its way through our operation, from the time we’re invited to bid a project until we complete the installation.

Thanks for your patronage and continued support. Come in and let us help you with your project. We’ll inspire your creativity and help make you look good when your project is complete.

I hope to see you at the shop.

Sincerely,

David Harris
President