Incorporated: 1901 as Jackson-Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber Company
NAIC: 423310 Lumber, Plywood, Millwork, and Wood Panel Merchant Wholesalers; 444110 Home Centers; 444190 Other Building Material Dealers
SIC: 5031 Lumber, Plywood & Millwork; 5211 Lumber & Other Building Materials
Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber Company focuses on selling building materials to professional builders in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. To a lesser degree, the company caters to nonprofessionals, offering merchandise and installation services geared to attract consumers. Foxworth-Galbraith operates through roughly 70 locations in its four-state territory. The company operates what it calls "Building Material Centers," truss plants, door plants, warehouses, and regional distribution facilities. Foxworth-Galbraith operates 24 locations in Arizona, 12 in Colorado, 10 in New Mexico, and 25 in Texas. The company is privately owned and managed by the third- and fourth-generation descendants of founders H. W. Galbraith and W. L. Foxworth.
Origins
By the time Foxworth-Galbraith celebrated its centennial, four generations of the founders' families had taken leadership roles in the company's management. The company was formed after a request for help by A. P. Jackson, who owned two lumberyards in what was known as New Mexico Territory. Jackson placed a call to a fellow lumberyard owner in Kerrville, Texas, asking for help in managing his growing business. The friend suggested one of his employees, H. W. Galbraith, which led to the formation of a partnership between Jackson and Galbraith in January 1901. The demands of the lumber business soon required additional assistance, as Jackson and Galbraith struggled to keep pace with the need for lumber in the burgeoning region. Several months after the partnership was formed, Galbraith was waiting for a train in Dalhart, Texas, evidently on the lookout for someone with the right qualifications to assist in the business. He walked over to a lumberyard owned by an Irish immigrant named W. L. Foxworth, one of two lumberyards in Texas owned by Foxworth. Galbraith was impressed by Foxworth, convinced he had found the ideal business partner. He walked back to the train station and sent Jackson a telegram. "Have found the man we have been looking for; catch the first train to Dalhart," the message read, according to an excerpt posted on the Foxworth-Galbraith web site more than a century later.
Jackson-Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber Company grew quickly once its three founders came together. The company hitched its expansion to the growth of the railroad, following the tracks laid by railroad lines such as Rock Island and Ft. Worth & Denver City. Wherever the railroad blazed new lines, new communities sprang up, hungry for building materials. A wealth of business fueled the company's expansion, as it established new yards in the Territory of New Mexico and throughout the Texas Panhandle. In 1906, H. W. Galbraith's brother, J. C. Galbraith, joined the company, making it a family affair for the first time. The year also marked the passing of Jackson, which led the partners to rename their company Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber Company.
Expansion continued during the ensuing decade, creating the framework that made Foxworth-Galbraith a regional force in the building-material supply industry. The company shadowed the movement of railroad construction, establishing yards to feed the demand of communities sprouting in the southwestern United States and acquiring properties operated by other lumber concerns. Internal and external growth brought the company into Arizona by 1919, a territory that, like New Mexico, had become a state seven years earlier. At roughly the same time the company crossed the border into Arizona, it began to benefit from the expansion of another industry, frenetic oil-drilling activity in northern Texas. Foxworth-Galbraith yards were inundated with orders for timber for oil derricks and pipe racks. The search for oil also created bustling points of commerce near the oilfields, as new communities emerged in need of building materials. Railroads and oil fed Foxworth-Galbraith's growth during its formative decades, providing a constant and plentiful source of business that was sorely missed during the 1930s. The Great Depression spared few companies from its wrath, but Foxworth-Galbraith persevered through the economic turmoil, surviving the great financial crucible of the 20th century.
The company's business deteriorated during the Great Depression. The boom years ignited by the growth of the railroad and oil industries in the Southwest gave way to a period of intense difficulty. Many companies succumbed to the pernicious economic forces, making survival through the decade-long ordeal an achievement not to be diminished. Foxworth-Galbraith suffered through the Great Depression--one of its yards went without a sale for ten days--but the period also included positive developments that had a lasting effect on the way the company operated. Revenues were $2 million in 1935, the year H. W. Galbraith's son, James Galbraith, joined the company. A graduate of New Mexico State University, James Galbraith was hired as a vice-president, but his responsibilities soon expanded. His father died the year after he joined the company and W. L. Foxworth died a dozen years later, paving the way for his rise to president and chairman of Foxworth-Galbraith and the implementation of his vision for the company.
When James Galbraith joined the company, the $2 million in revenue was collected from 70 locations scattered throughout New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Decades of expansion had created a sprawling organization, one that Galbraith sought to inject with a sense of order. One of the first initiatives completed under his control was to centralize lumber purchases for all of the company's operations in Texas. Galbraith lent cohesion to the company, creating a single distribution company, Galbraith Steel and Supply, for the centrally purchased lumber, and centralizing other functions such as purchasing, payroll, marketing, and finance, establishing the company's main offices in Dallas, Texas.
Development of a Retail Arm
Once economic conditions improved, Foxworth-Galbraith began to enjoy financial success again. Its customers, almost entirely professional contractors and builders, came from the industries that underpinned commerce in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, seeking out Foxworth-Galbraith locations for supplies to assist in mining and oilfield work, general construction and repair work, and farming and ranching. By the 1960s, however, the company began to court a new type of customer, the do-it-yourself consumer. Foxworth-Galbraith never strayed far from the professional customers that served as the company's bedrock, but it did stray, adding a selection of hardware during the 1960s that became the springboard for its home centers. The company began establishing purely retail locations geared for consumers, creating a network of stores that stood in contrast to the "stick" yards that had sustained the company entirely for the previous half-century. During the 1970s and 1980s, the company began establishing larger retail outlets and paying greater attention to merchandising, convenience, and advertising, seeking to create a new business segment to complement its primary focus on professional customers.
Foxworth-Galbraith's efforts to build a consumer side to its business occurred over the course of decades. Always a secondary pursuit, the retail business was slow in evolving, but during the 1990s the efforts to attract consumers became more aggressive. Midway through the decade, Foxworth-Galbraith launched its "ReStore Program" aimed at turning its home centers of the 1960s into retail outlets that were more attractive to do-it-yourself customers. The company had more than 50 retail stores in the Southwest when the program was unveiled at a store in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. The store featured 78-inch gondolas surrounding the sales floor, circling 58-inch gondolas placed in the center. A wide aisle down the center of the store pulled customers to the back, where a project information center featured walk-in displays of windows, doors, bathrooms, and kitchens. The format placed an emphasis on five merchandise categories--plumbing, electrical, tools, hardware, and paint--that management determined consumers would need to complete building or remodeling projects. For a company that spent nearly a century focused almost exclusively on professional clientele, the merchandise, design, and layout of the Mt. Pleasant store represented a significant departure from the norm, a diversification presided over by James Galbraith, Jr., and developed by his son, J. C. Galbraith III, who served as vice-president, and Walter L. Foxworth, who served as president. "Traditionally," the younger Galbraith said in an April 1994 interview with Do-It-Yourself Retailing, "we've done well marketing our lumber and building materials, and now we have made a commitment to dramatically change and improve the store side of our business." The company projected up to 20 of its stores, referred to as "Building Material Centers," could participate in the ReStore Program within the next two years. "I think we've finally made the move to position ourselves in today's retail market," Foxworth said to Do-It-Yourself Retailing.
When Foxworth-Galbraith launched its ReStore Program, the company was in the midst of a growth spurt. Revenues increased at an annual rate of 35 percent during the first part of the decade, jumping from $108 million to $360 million. The revenue was collected from three types of businesses operated by the company. Foxworth-Galbraith's mainstay business, contributing roughly 80 percent of its annual sales, was its longtime relationship with professional contractors and subcontractors, whom the company courted in each of its three formats. The origins of the company were reflected in what Galbraith III referred to as "little, old-line lumberyards" in a January 1995 interview with Building Supply Home Centers. The lumberyards were located in small towns throughout the company's three-state operating territory. "In those markets, we have to have all the business: commercial, industrial, farmers, ranchers, consumers, contractors, tradesmen, remodelers," Galbraith III said. "We have to be the big fish in the little pond." In slightly larger markets, the company exerted its greatest attention to luring nonprofessional customers. Lumberyards located in medium-sized towns away from major metropolitan markets featured its ReStore Program format, but the core customer remained the contractor, subcontractor, and tradesperson. Foxworth-Galbraith's third format competed in major metropolitan markets, designed as a strictly contractor-oriented lumberyard where "you're selling to a framer, basically," Foxworth said in his January 1995 interview with Building Supply Home Centers.
1998: "Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal"
After Foxworth-Galbraith registered robust growth during the first half of the 1990s, Galbraith III made the unusual announcement that he wanted to keep growth in check. Instead of revenue growth of 35 percent, Galbraith III aimed for 12 percent growth in 1995. "We have outstanding people, but when you grow at that rate ... you put a strain on your people," Galbraith III said in his January 1995 interview with Building Supply Home Centers. "In some places, we've just outgrown the physical plants themselves. We're for growth as long as we can properly manage it and take care of our customers in the process." The circumspect tone of Galbraith III gave way to an ambitious attitude a short time later, establishing a long-range objective that Foxworth-Galbraith would pursue for years to come. In 1998, Galbraith III announced the company was determined to reach $1 billion in revenue by its 110th anniversary in 2011, an objective he dubbed as the "Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal." The year after the announcement, expansion efforts demonstrated that Galbraith III's words were being put into action. The company added 14 new yards in 1999 and opened three new plants, giving it 55 retail operations and a total of 80 locations when manufacturing and distribution facilities were included. The year marked the acquisition of Colorado Springs, Colorado-based Brookhart's Inc., a family-owned company with seven yards in the state and truss plants in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. The acquisition added $80 million in annual revenue, enabling Foxworth-Galbraith to generate $455 million in sales in 1999, when it ranked as the 16th largest, professional-oriented building materials dealer in the United States.
As Foxworth-Galbraith pressed toward its financial goal for its 110th anniversary, the company's more symbolically important centennial neared. James Galbraith, the company's chairman emeritus, continued to work at the company on a daily basis until mid-1999, devoting 64 years of his life to guiding the business. He died in December 2000, one month shy of the 100th anniversary of the company his father had founded. When centennial celebrations commenced at the start of 2001, five descendants of the Foxworth and Galbraith families marked the milestone as company executives, led by the third generation of Galbraith III, who served as president, and Walter L. Foxworth, who served as chief executive officer and chairman. The fourth generation of leadership included Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer Jack Foxworth and Executive Vice-President Grant Foxworth.
After a century of business, Foxworth-Galbraith knew without question its markets and its customers. Professional contractors and subcontractors accounted for 80 percent of the company's business at the century mark, and they would continue to remain the primary focus of the company in the years ahead. The company was on track to reach its goal of $1 billion in sales, recording $755 million in sales in 2006, and seeming to ensure that the Foxworth and Galbraith families would continue to hold sway in the Southwest well into the future.
Principal Subsidiaries
Fox-Gal Wholesale Lumber Company; Arizona Sash & Door Company.
Principal Competitors
Ace Hardware Corporation; The Home Depot, Inc.; Lowe's Companies, Inc.
Further Reading
Ahner, Lori D., "New Retail Mission," Do-It-Yourself Retailing, April 1994, p. 76.
Consavage, Liz, "Growth Conscious Foxworth-Galbraith Not Slowing As It Enters 100th Year," National Home Center News, December 11, 2000, p. 16.
Gonzalez, Jason, "Foxworth-Galbraith Mourns One of Its Own," National Home Center News, February 19, 2001, p. 3.
King, Adam, "A Testament to Tradition," Do-It-Yourself Retailing, June 2001, p. 57.
"Obituaries," Do-It-Yourself Retailing, April 2001, p. 100.
Pitts, Gail, "Colorado Springs, Colo., Building Company Sells Assets," Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, September 24, 1999.
"Strategies Blossom at Foxworth-Galbraith," Building Supply Home Centers, January 1995, p. 18.
— Jeffrey L. Covell
