Type: Cooperative
Address: 200 Industrial Way, P.O. Box 258, Mt. Angel, Oregon, 97362, U.S.A.
Telephone: (503) 845-6122
Toll Free: (800) 382-5339
Fax: (503) 845-9310
Web: http://www.wilco.coop
Employees: 450
Sales: $163 million (2007 est.)
Incorporated: 1967
NAIC: 424910 Farm Supplies Merchant Wholesalers; 444130 Hardware Stores
SIC: 5191 Farm Supplies; 5251 Hardware Stores
Wilco Farm Stores is a grower-owned farm supply cooperative with ten retail farm stores throughout the mid-Willamette Valley in McMinnville, Newberg, Canby, Cornelius, Oregon City, Silverton, Stayton, and Springfield in Oregon, and Battle Ground in southwest Washington. It operates through three divisions: agronomy products and services, including seed processing and marketing; bulk petroleum products for farm and home, including six retail gas stations; and retail farm stores. Stores vary in size and product mix; however, all have the following departments: lawn and garden products, Western and work clothing and boots, pet foods and supplies, livestock equipment and supplies, bagged livestock feed, and farm hardware. Wilco also has eight agronomy centers that provide professional agronomist services and sell commercial quantities of fertilizers and agricultural chemicals in Whiteson, Donald, Harrisburg, Mt. Angel, Cornelius, and Stayton, Oregon, and in Chehalis and Sumner, Washington. The co-op's central office is in Mt. Angel, Oregon. Wilco has more than 3,000 members and several hundred thousand nonmember customers.
Creating a Co-op: 1967
In 1967, five mid-Willamette Valley-based farmer-owned cooperatives--Mt. Angel Farmers Union Warehouse, Santiam Farmers Cooperative, Donald Farmers co-op, Valley Farmers co-op of Silverton, and Canby Cooperative--merged to form Wilco. These cooperatives themselves were the product of ten mergers that had occurred during the prior 35 years. The new Wilco, whose name came from "Willamette Consolidated," set up headquarters in Mt. Angel, Oregon. Its products and services included farm, home, and ranch supplies. Lee McFarland, a graduate of Oregon State University who had been with Pacific Supply Cooperative in Portland since 1956, was named general manager of the co-op on a two-year contract.
As a cooperative, Wilco was dedicated to the co-op mission of serving its patron-members by offering competitive prices and assistance with livestock and crop-growing questions. Membership was limited to full- or part-time farmers and ranchers, who paid a membership fee and received annual patronage dividends (cooperative profits) in direct proportion to the amount of their purchases for each year. Members also had the right to vote on such issues as electing board members, establishing and/or changing bylaws, and other cooperative-related matters. Nonmember patrons could shop at Wilco locations, but did not receive the benefit of a year-end dividend or enjoy the privilege of voting.
Early Success, Weathering Hard Times, and Reorganization: 1968-89
The new co-op was immediately a successful venture, achieving the greater efficiencies it had forecast through consolidation. In 1968, its revenues were $6.3 million and it employed 90 full-time people. In 1969, according to plan, Lee McFarland resigned as general manager and was succeeded by Tom Gorman, who had been assistant manager. The co-op also purchased a ten-acre industrial site in Mt. Angel, Oregon, to prepare for future growth. However, the first half of the 1970s was a period of agricultural depression in the Northwest. In 1970, farm losses from the previous year depressed revenues to $5.9 million.
The years 1974 and 1975 represented boom years for the Wilco co-op and, despite the return of hard times throughout the remainder of the decade, the co-op was investing in growth again in the second half of the 1970s. In the late 1980s, it upgraded its facilities and equipment and updated its image. In 1987 alone, Wilco consolidated all petroleum activities, including transportation, into a single operating division, the Farmers' Petroleum Department. Purchasing activities were consolidated into a single department responsible for coordinating and negotiating all product needs. In addition, the Stayton, Mt. Angel, and Donald branches for seed processing underwent improvements and enlargements and the Mt. Angel Farm Store was remodeled.
Preparing for the 21st Century
During the late 1990s and the start of the next century, Wilco again expanded through acquisition, both horizontally, by adding more stores, and vertically, by adding suppliers. In 1996, it merged with West Valley Farmers, expanding its business geographically eastward from the Willamette River. With the addition of West Valley, Wilco covered most of the four-county mid-Willamette area and revenues grew to $70 million by 1998.
In 2000, Wilco again expanded through acquisitions. It assumed operation of the Farm Store in Tangent, Oregon, and purchased the Eugene Farmers Cooperative, Cenex Harvest States (CHS) Supply and Marketing, and the CHS Harrisburg Ag Center. These purchases afforded the co-op the benefit of combining all its southern market agronomy activities in Harrisburg, Oregon. The following year, Wilco acquired Valley Lime, a local company with a long history of providing liming services to growers.
The opportunity to expand into Washington State arrived in 2002 when Cenex Harvest States Supply offered its 15,000-square-foot store in Battle Ground, Washington, for sale. The Battle Ground store dated back to the 1920s, when it had opened as a dairy cooperative with a bottling plant and cheese manufacturing facility; it was known over the years as the Washington Dairyman's Cooperative, Clark County Dairymen's Cooperative, and Agco. After Cenex purchased the store, it began to sell fuel, feed, and farm supplies.
Expanding Geographically and Demographically: 2002-07
Wilco first expressed interest in purchasing the Battle Ground store in 2002. At that time, Wilco operated seven stores in Oregon, having closed its Mt. Angel store following the remodel of another store in Silverton, only four miles away. Wilco also owned seven retail-commercial gas stations, two grass seed-processing plants, and a bulk fuel delivery service. However, talks around the store in Battle Ground fell apart, and it was not until 2004 that the purchase finally occurred.
The 15,000-square-foot Battle Ground store proved within its first year to be one of the company's best performers, rivaling sales at Wilco's top store in McMinnville, Oregon. Less than six months after acquiring it, Wilco moved the store to a new 35,000-square-foot property and expanded the store's product mix to attract a wider base of customers.
The focus on a larger customer base was a response to a demographic shift then occurring in the mid-Willamette Valley. Large commercial farms were being split into smaller parcels, new hobby farms, and ranchettes. Jeff Duyck characterized the change in the following way in the Forest Grove News-Times in 2007: "The agricultural base is shrinking as more and more farms get cut up into smaller acreages where someone works in town and comes home to their small horse ranch." Duyck sold Pacific Harvest and Dutch Country Mercantile (and its previous incarnation, C.C. Ruth & Co.) in Washington County, Oregon, to Wilco in 2007. According to Duyck, the demand for small-farm supplies was skyrocketing. "[T]here are more and more houses in the county and that plays right into Wilco's retail side." Pacific Harvest served larger agricultural operations with seed, fertilizer, and irrigation supplies, while Dutch Country sold livestock feeds, equipment, and supplies, and pet food and supplies.
The Rise of Hobby Farming
Susan Aldrich-Markham, an Oregon State University extension agent, attributed the trend toward hobby farming to Washington County's ample water supply, crop diversity, and easy access to metropolitan Portland for distribution and sales. "The more people who are coming out there, the more hobby farms you're going to have," she expressed in a 2007 Forest Grove News-Times article. According to data from the Oregon Department of Agriculture, farms earning $1,000 or less increased sharply from 1997 to 2002, including 2,851 new hobby farms, while there were overall declines or only modest increases in larger farms. In Washington County, where the number of total farms declined, 18 small new farms popped up during that five-year period.
Wilco CEO Doug Hoffman explained to the Forest Grove News-Times, in February 2007, that the co-op had wanted to move into Washington County for years to attract the region's burgeoning hobby farm community. The company's first store in Washington County followed the opening of a new location by Coastal Farm and Supply, the company's main regional competitor. Wilco, which had yearly sales of more than $140 million in 2007, broke ground on a 20,000-square-foot full-service retail outlet in Cornelius that summer. In addition to carrying a full line of implements, the new store also sold a large selection of clothing from Carhartts to Levi's. "As the land transitions from productive ag land to ranchettes, hobby farms or high density farming like nursery, we transition our businesses," Hoffman explained.
Combining New Directions and Traditional Customers: 2007-08
Also in 2007, Wilco purchased Canby Farm Garden and Pet Center. That same year, it built and opened its first "Equine Destination Store," a 15,000-square-foot farm store that combined its purchase of FarmGro Supply in Newberg, Oregon, with an existing store. In addition to horse supplies, equipment, English and Western tack, saddles, and riding apparel, the store offered basic farm hardware, a covered garden nursery area, a store-within-a-store work wear and boot department, and a complete pet department with grooming services.
Yet while Wilco focused on growing "lifestyle stores" to meet the needs of the hobby farmer, it still made a point of serving its traditional base of large commercial farmers as it completed the second half of the decade and planned for its future. In 2006, Wilco partnered with Agriliance, the nation's largest supplier of products used by the agricultural industry to create Wilco Agriliance, adding agronomy operations in Chehalis, Washington. In September 2007, Agriliance LLC was repositioned with Land O'Lakes Inc. and CHS Inc. Land O'Lakes acquired the crop protection products business along with related training, technical, and support services. CHS acquired the wholesale crop nutrients business, which began to operate as part of its Ag Business segment.
The co-op also began constructing a new liquid fertilizer plant at its Mt. Angel Agronomy Center in 2008 and expanded its area, moving into the Springfield/Eugene communities and surrounding areas with a new store.
Principal Competitors
Coastal Farm & Ranch.
Further Reading
Fehrenbacher, Gretchen, "Westward Ho: Wilco Farm Stores Will Move Farther West from Old Town Battle Ground," Columbian, September 17, 2004, p. E1.
Nelson, Jonathan, "A New Home for Wilco; Farm Supply Store Moves West in Battle Ground," Columbian, March 25, 2005, p. E1.
— Carrie Rothburd
