Bruce Bauer Lumber & Supply

Bruce Bauer Lumber Uses Paladin to Stay atop a Challenging Market

When Bruce Bauer opened his lumberyard in San Carlos, California in 1946, the city was a sleepy bedroom community with a population of less than 15,000. Today, it is part of the sprawling Bay Area peninsula that stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to Silicon Valley and the company uses Paladin Data Corporation technology to serve a new generation of customers.

Bruce Bauer Lumber and Supply is still a family business. Bruce’s son-in-law, Don Thom, bought it in 1966 and moved it to neighboring Mountain View. His sons and grandsons now run the business and they chose Paladin to help them stay abreast of the changes in technology and their changing market. 

Company Vice President David Thom runs the lumber department and is its chief buyer. Brian Thom heads an award-winning windows and doors showroom. Together they serve customers ranging from homeowners to building contractors who are developing housing all over the Bay Area. 

“It’s challenging to be in the lumber business today. We’ve succeeded by not putting all our eggs in one basket,” says David, adding that while many of the business’s competitors have closed over the years, Bruce Bauer Lumber has thrived by focusing on taking care of its customers. “It’s always been homeowners who have kept us going.” 

Paladin provides LBM businesses like Bruce Bauer Lumber and Supply an array of digital tools that make it easy for stores and their customers to get exactly the right products. Market Driven Inventory Management™ keeps track of the store’s vast inventory ranging from hardware to its extensive LBM offerings. Bruce Bauer stocks a wide variety of lumber ranging from various grades of Douglas fir and redwood to more hard-to-find woods such as Baltic Birch plywood.  

Paladin’s lumber-specific tools such as its Thousand Board Foot and Square Footage calculators make it easy for stores and their customers to get precise measurements. Other features like Special Orders, Yard Orders, Job Management, and Construction Bundles and Kits allow for more accurate management of large projects. 

Mobile applications such as Mobile2Deliver and Mobile2Checkout enable stores to make sales in the lumberyard and manage deliveries from handheld devices. 

David says managing adequate levels of lumber in 2020 has been especially difficult. Supply chains have been disrupted by mills closing and by increased demand from homeowners doing DIY projects.  

“We’re trying to keep our inventory levels high, but with some supplies limited, it’s been a challenge,” he says. “People who come into our store are going to find things they’re not going to find at big-box stores.” 

Paladin’s versatile platform also offers a variety of features and integrations that allow businesses to manage all their operations – marketing, advertising, digital presence, inventory, online and in-store sales, workforce management, customer outreach, back-office operations, and more. 

Bruce Bauer also uses Paladin’s Managed Services and Managed Network to keep its network running quickly, reliably and safely. 

When they chose Paladin to streamline modernize and streamline their operations, they were looking for a company with a proven track record of customer service that complemented their own and a retail system that could provide a single point of management for their multifaceted business. Paladin’s 40-year history of providing state-of-the-art retail technology to the LBM industry checked the first box. The intuitive retail platform, innovative products, and 100% USA-based support closed the deal. 

Today, Bruce Bauer Lumber & Supply is a legacy company built on eight decades of hardware and LBM know-how that’s serving a modern building and home improvement industry and doing it with Paladin’s innovative retail technology.