Page 6 - RosboroAR2018

Rosboro is dedicated to growing the glulam business. Knowing that success in this market is predicated on having exceptional eld-support available to our customers, we have added Market Development Managers throughout our key geographies. We now have representation in Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Denver, and Phoenix.
Market Development Managers have been hired in Southern California, Northern California, Washington/Alaska, Oregon/Idaho/ Texas, Ariizona/ Nevada, and in the mountain states to promote Rosboro products directly
to engineers, distributors, dealers
and builders. A second Account Manager was added to help process the additional quotes
and orders coming in from the MDMs. For
the rst time Rosboro established a Director of Engineering, greatly expanding their ability to provide technical support to their customers. According to Smith, “Sales are the lifeblood of any company. This larger team makes us so much more capable. We can now reach deep into our markets and ensure that our customers have everything they need to grow with us.”
In order to keep up with the additional demand, Rosboro also added personnel to their manufacturing team. Keith Caldera joined the Company mid-year to lead the continuous improvement process. There was an immediate impact. According to Kevin Lee, Senior Vice President of Operations, “We are seeing a fundamental shift in the culture of our manufacturing facilities, and continuous
improvement has become integral to every activity at every level. This has translated to over $1 million in direct operational savings in 2018.” Another continuous focus of the Company is the safety of its employees; Mike McCormick, our new Safety Director, was hired in December, 2018 to oversee H&S across their various production facilities.
Knowing that the company would need strategic marketing repower to compliment the new sales and production capabilities, Brian Wells was recruited to step in as Director of Marketing. “Rosboro just has so much energy and potential for growth. 2018 was all about getting the
right things in motion to begin leveraging that potential,” says Wells. One area where there was an immediate opportunity to increase value was New Product Development. A more disciplined process for delivering market-driven new products was implemented, and out of that a number of o erings were brought to market.
Rosboro launched a line of laminated heavy- timber rim products under the X-Rim brand. Rim is a structural member used inside wall framing at the transition between oors. Probably the most exciting X-Rim variant is a re retardant treated rim targeted at the rapidly growing Type III construction market. This is the rst UL Certi ed, APA tested glulam rim product in the market and initial demand is high. Used primarily in multi- family construction where building codes require re-rated assemblies, FRT X-Rim lls a gap in a widely under-served market.
The Company also launched two new header and beam products, Engineered Structural Lumber and Rosboro Laminated Timber. These products are the same full-framing-width sizes as the Company’s agship X-Beam, but with a planed-smooth industrial nish more suited for enclosed applications. Targeted at builders who are looking for high quality but economical framing solutions, ESL and RLT really round out Rosboro’s line of glulam products.
With the cost and availability of labor becoming such a signi cant challenge for the industry, distributors are looking for ways to reduce their handling costs. Multi-family and commercial jobs have a high degree of repeat lengths and sizes, requiring a distributor to spend many hours cutting and handling beams. Rosboro saw this as an opportunity, and launched their cut program in 2018. Leveraging their unique production capabilities, the Company is able to provide cut-to-length packages of stock beams and headers to their wholesale partners. “We believe in making things as easy as possible for our distributors, and the cut program is another tool we now have available to improve their businesses,” says Smith.
Rosboro has committed itself to being a true single-source for glulam products. As the cut program demonstrates, this takes more than simply producing stock beams for wholesale
At Rosboro, the future looks more promising than ever. True to the Company’s tagline, they are Building Better; Building better teams, better products, and better capabilities to serve their customers.
6 ANNUAL REPORT 2018