B & L Wholesale Supply, Inc.

About B & L Wholesale Supply: Wholesale/Distribution

Rank on Top 100: 65

Top Executive: Donald R. Tomeny

Employees: 230

Website: www.blwholesale.com

We asked to Donald Tomeny, president, to talk about his business.

Question: Tell me briefly about B & L Wholesale Supply.
Tomeny: B&L Wholesale Supply, Inc. can be best described as a wholesale distributor of building materials including roofing, siding and windows to both the residential and commercial markets. We presently operate branches in Rochester, Buffalo, Jamestown, and Erie, serving remodelers, new builders and commercial roofing contractors from Syracuse, NY to Erie, PA.

B&L Wholesale Supply, Inc. has always operated using one very simple premise. Concentrate on providing real service at levels that cannot be matched by the competition and the premier customer base will not only recognize these efforts but also reward them with their business.

B&L Wholesale Supply, Inc. employees are the most important element in the formula. All the trucks and inventory in the world are insignificant if every employee does not strive for excellence and use every asset to provide unmatched service to the trade.

"Service - easy to promise / tough to deliver - We Deliver" has been a company slogan for 22 years and consistently doing business with this idea in mind has been our formula for success.

B&L Wholesale Supply, Inc provides many opportunities and encourages their employees to get involved with local charities. Several of our managers sit on local boards. We encourage our employees to participate as volunteers in the community and currently have people on the boards of Ronald McDonald House and Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong Memorial Hospital. We sponsor charity golf tournaments in all four cities where we do business with the proceeds going to Special Olympics (Jamestown), Buffalo Children's Hospital, Sarah Reed Children's Center (Erie) and Golisano Children's Hospital (Rochester). Last year our tournaments raised over $180,000 for these charities, with one third of money donated by B&L Wholesale Supply, Inc.

Question: How successful has your company been this year?
Tomeny: 2006 was a very good year in spite of pricing pressures brought on by raw material increases and shortages. We managed to make progress in increasing our market share and we emphasized several new product groups to increase sales - stone veneer and composite decking. We also increased our window and door business in each of our branch locations.

Question: What has driven your growth to earn you the No. 65 spot on this year's Top 100?
Tomeny: B&L Wholesale Supply, Inc.'s business philosophy is based on a respect for our customers, vendors and employees. We are looking for long-term relationships and we feel that by establishing a mutually beneficial atmosphere with all three groups that they will be more apt to support our business endeavors. We strive for honesty and integrity in all relationships and we encourage our customers, vendors and suppliers to come to us with their concerns. Phone calls are not screened and anyone in the company can be reached directly by calling their extension.

"Service - easy to promise/tough to deliver - We deliver" is our motto and we will go to almost any means to satisfy our customers and encourage their loyalty. Our sales people are encouraged to treat our customers respectfully and to "be the reason why our customers buy their materials at B&L."

We are always looking out for the company's best interests and vendors are treated as business partners, not just someone to provide the best price. We feel that this type of relationship benefits us when we need their help to meet our customer's expectations.

Our employees help define who we are. We feel if we treat them fairly they will care about the company and give the extra efforts that are sometimes needed to meet our customer expectations. This is the reason why we have an open door policy and provide excellent pay and benefits. Many of our employees are long term and we have very low turnover rates. We recognize years of service every year at our annual party in December.

Question: What additional services can the Rochester Business Alliance provide to help your business?
Tomeny: We currently utilize the Friday Business Briefings, the Human Resources hot line, various other seminars, the Health & Safety networking opportunities, annual wage and benefit surveys and the small business forum. We have also used the placement services in the past. We consider the Rochester Business Alliance to be a terrific resource.

Question: What are the best things about doing business in Rochester?
Tomeny: The local economy has always been relatively stable and this has made it easier to plan for consistent, controlled growth over the years. New construction starts to fluctuate from year to year but this is not a roller coaster ride like many areas of the country.

The weather is also fairly consistent and we are not affected by hurricanes and hail storms which can be very good or very bad for our type of business.

Question: What are the best things about doing business in Rochester?
Tomeny: The quality and character of the contractor base is at a very high level in this region. There are excellent builder/contractor organizations like the Rochester Home Builders Association that bring a higher level of professionalism and integrity to the entire industry. Organizations like the Bettter Contractors Bureau, a local agency formed 30 years ago for the purpose of raising the integrity of the whole remodeling industry through a strict code of ethics, separate our region from others.

Question: What are the biggest opportunities you see ahead, as well as the biggest challenges?
Tomeny: As consolidation within large industry groups takes place, small, local distributors are being taken over by national chains and this has created some very real opportunities for large, regional distributors like B&L.

The nationals take a cookie cutter approach to make all their branches operate at reduced overhead levels so they can sell product at reduced costs. Their problem is they must cut their service levels in the process which is the number one reason why contractors choose their source of materials.

When a high dominant, high service, locally owned and managed company is in an area, they actually gain market share by providing the higher service levels.

The biggest challenge has always been maintaining these high service levels as it is very easy to lose sight of a problem in the system that can affect other departments if we lose concentration.

To sum up, no company can take away great service from a company willing and able to devote the time, expertise and money to provide it.