Hardy birthday party upsets some furloughed 84 Lumber workers
In retrospect, maybe the timing could have been better. 84 Lumber Co., dealing with a slowdown in the overall housing market, laid off 25 to 30 people at its corporate headquarters last month.
Then last weekend, the family of 84 Lumber founder Joe Hardy threw a lavish 84th birthday party in which the patriarch was entertained by Bette Midler, Robin Williams and Christina Aguilera.
Despite the timing, the two events are not related, said company spokesman Jeff Nobers, who noted that news coverage of the party also brought out those still upset with the company for canceling its sponsorship of a high-profile pro golf tournament last year. “You can understand when people lump it together,” he said, adding, “That party was planned and paid for by the Hardy family.”
It can be hard to separate Hardy and his family from the business that made their fortunes.
Maggie Hardy Magerko, president of the company her father founded in the 1950s, regularly makes the Forbes magazine list of the nation’s wealthiest people. But her day job requires steering the private company through what has been a difficult time for the nation’s home building industry.
Job cuts have been reported around the country over the past few months as those involved in new home construction have felt the combined force of higher interest rates, a slower-than-expected start in rebuilding hurricane-devastated regions and excess inventory of new homes.
There are hopes that a turnaround may be under way. After a dramatic dip in home sales that began in the summer and dragged on, the U.S. Commerce Department last month reported a 3.4 percent rise in sales of new single-family homes in November.
That number may support the theory that a rather abrupt correction from the “unsustainable highs of 2005” has ended and inventories of unsold units are being cleared out, according to a statement from David Seiders, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders.
84 Lumber’s Nobers said falling prices of materials such as dry wall and framing lumber have hurt, but that the company has continued to gain market share. Sales numbers for the most recent year were not available. The private company reported nearly $4 billion in sales in 2005.
When the housing slowdown began last summer, the company decided not to fill positions whenever possible, said Nobers. By year-end, the supplier to the professional building market had trimmed about 100 positions from its 800-employee corporate headquarters, using a mix of attrition, personnel transfers and layoffs. The layoffs came in December.
Earlier last year, 84 Lumber took plenty of criticism for its decision not to invest tens millions of dollars in continuing the golf tournament.
The company has defended the move as a responsible one meant to funnel needed resources into building new stores and growing its market position.
84 Lumber plans to add more than 20 new stores this year and about 10 plants to build housing components as it tries to gain share in fast-growth markets. It now operates about 460 stores and 20 component plants.
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.