By 2010, the National Association of Home Builders predicts, half of all new homes will be considered “green” by some measure. For the Fullerton Companies, a Plymouth-headquartered supplier of building products and services, the green trend is a golden opportunity.
Jeff Howe, Fullerton’s CEO since last year, says his goal is to get his company certified as sustainable by the end of the decade. That means that every cabinet, two-by-four, and product line that Fullerton sells, as well as every pallet that transports those products within its stores, will have to be certified as originating from “sustainable” forests—those where timber harvesting practices maintain soil, clean water, and forest ecosystems, and allow growth of new trees through natural seeding.
Promoting “green” isn’t all that this 125-year-old, under-the-radar company is up to. Last year, Fullerton launched its third business unit, The Remodeler’s Choice, a supply center for professional remodelers. Located in Minneapolis’s Uptown neighborhood, The Remodeler’s Choice is Fullerton’s first urban supply center. Fullerton’s The Builder’s Choice unit caters to builders of new homes and has 16 retail centers in six Midwest states; four of those stores are in the Twin Cities area. Both businesses supply lumber, tools, hardware, cabinetry, and so on.
Fullerton Building Systems also manufacturers prefab commercial buildings, primarily for restaurant chains. “We are the largest builder of McDonald’s, but our customers include 40 different chains, including Dairy Queen, Arby’s, and Church’s Chicken,” Howe says. Like The Remodeler’s Choice, The Builder’s Choice and Building Systems also offer a number of sustainable options. “We’re looking at making all of our product lines green, or at least putting green products in every category,” Howe says.
Sustainability won’t be Fullerton’s only marketing advantage. Howe says Fullerton Building Systems is one of the few (if not the only) companies in the nation that can put together a building’s brick and stone “segments” in the factory, allowing customers to erect a new building in fewer than 10 days.
Fullerton employs 350 people in the six states in which it operates; about half of the company’s employees are based in Minnesota. Howe projects 2007 revenues will hit $90 million. Year-over-year revenue in the Building Systems unit grew by 25 percent in 2006. Revenue in The Builder’s Choice unit fell slightly in a year in which the building supply industry saw a 7 percent drop in business due to a housing slowdown.
Howe, who was president of Mounds View millwork company Colonial Craft from 1995 to 2003, is only the second non–family member to run the company, which was founded in 1882 in Sioux City, Iowa. The company moved to Minneapolis in 1900. In 2000, the green-leaning Marna Wagner Fullerton took over as CEO and hired Howe as a consultant following the death of her husband, James G. Fullerton, a grandson of one of the founders. In 2006, she named Howe CEO. Marna Fullerton’s four children serve on the company board.
Howe’s interest in sustainable wood goes back more than two decades, when he earned a PhD in forest products marketing at the University of Maine. He is also the founder of Dovetail Partners, a Minneapolis nonprofit that promotes the use of “green” building products.
“To a certain extent, [the Fullerton family] desires a return to the days when Fullerton Lumber Corporation was the biggest and best building materials dealer in the Midwest,” Howe says. “I have often been called ‘visionary’ in my dealings within the forest products industry, and I felt this was the opportunity to put my money where my mouth was.”
