Company: United Builders Supply Co., Inc.
Owners: Harold and Michael Slosberg
Number of employees: 200
Type of business: Building materials supplier
Year founded: 1944
Annual revenues: WND
Every morning about seven, Oak Street in Westerly is lined with trucks.
Big trucks. Small trucks.
“It’s just amazing,” said Kathleen Hobe, advertising coordinator at
United Builders Supply Co., Inc. in Westerly.
What’s more amazing is what those trucks represent to a building supply
company that employs 200 workers at five sites – which also include
Richmond and Block Island, as well as Niantic and Quaker Hill,
Connecticut – and does about 80 percent of its business with
contractors.
“Contractors have more work than they know what to do with,” said Jeff
Brennan, a vice president and general manager at UBS. “A lot of our
customers have 10 months to 16 months worth of work ahead of them.”
The key to the UBS success story, said Brennan, is knowing what the
contractors need – and making sure it is available. For years now, those
contractors – whether they are building houses or remodeling kitchens –
have consistently returned to UBS, from one job to the next.
“We turn over so much of our inventory that our buying power is
incredible,” Hobe said.
UBS has clearly benefited from a building boom. Housing starts have
reached record heights in southern Rhode Island in recent years, and
according to Hobe, nearby New London County has enjoyed a similar growth
spurt.
UBS’ Block Island location opened just over a year ago, and according to
Hobe, it has been an enormous success. In addition to serving as a
hardware store, it is a satellite office where contractors on the island
can order materials
Add to that new home construction a dramatic resurgence in people
remodeling and repairing older homes, and UBS is simply soaring. In
fact, said Hobe, the company has increased its efforts to sell to the
retail market, because more people than ever are rolling up their shirt
sleeves and getting to work.
UBS’ Westerly headquarters offer a glimpse of everything the company is
about. Like its slogan, UBS is in fact “much more than a lumberyard.”
In addition to its offices and a small retail hardware store, the
Westerly location includes two huge yards and seemingly endless
warehouse space. There is lumber in all shapes, sizes and grades. And
there is more. There is an extensive collection of brick. There is
cultured stone, fireplace pieces, vinyl siding, fencing and garden
statues.
Across a parking lot from the company’s main headquarters is the UBS
Design Center the company’s premier showroom. The design center features
an upstairs kitchen showroom with several variations of kitchen –
including a working kitchen that is regularly featured as part of a
cooking show on ABC6 television.
The design center, Hobe said, is meant to give the customer an up-close
look at the design techniques and most importantly, to provide ideas,
said Hobe.
“People sometimes have a hard time visualizing, but with a showroom like
this they can see and feel,” she said.
Sharing the same parking lot is UBS’ Tag Sale, a retail operation that
the company uses to sell materials that have been sent back or over-
ordered. It’s a popular place, particularly on weekends.
“People come into Tag Sale on weekends and just kind of wander,” said
Hobe. “You never know what you are going to find. You can put a whole
kitchen together here.”
Hobe grew up in New Jersey and spent much of the past decade in
Connecticut. She never expected to be in the building supply business.
But UBS, she said, is a special kind of company.
“A lot of people who work here – have only worked here,” said Hobe.
“There is so much character, so many little things that make this place
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so special.”
Nothing makes the company more special than its founder, Harold
Slosberg. At 87, he remains a presence.
Brennan has worked for the Slosbergs for more than 20 years. The father
and son team, Brennan said, have fueled the company’s success. And
Harold, he said, is simply amazing.
“Harold can incorporate his experience from the 1940s into the 1990s
without forgetting that it’s the 1990s,” said Brennan.
