Branching Out

Larry Reese became a business owner because his mother talked his father out of firing him from the family construction-supplies company.

Instead, Stanley Reese helped his son open one.

At Woodland Building Supply, on Southwest Philadelphia's border with University City, Larry Reese, 41, could brainstorm without butting heads with his 65-year-old father - a man he adores, just not at work.

"I would never have been happy working with my dad the rest of my life," Larry Reese said, as his father sat nearby nodding, having just confessed about the time he went home frustrated after a day at work at West Lumber Co. and told his wife, Faith, he was tempted to fire their son.

With cousin Larry Bernstein, 42, of West Grove, Larry Reese opened Woodland in 2002, recognizing opportunity in green building long before it went mainstream.

"I would commend them for being ahead of the curve," said Alex Dews, executive director of the Delaware Valley Green Building Council.

Woodland solved what could have been a thorny business problem as well as a nightmare at family dinners. It was one of the many improvisations this entrepreneurial family employed to stay in business more than 80 years after Lazarus Reese led the way.

"Every generation . . . contributed an innovation that kept the company relevant," Larry Reese said.

It began with a pushcart.

A Russian immigrant, carpenter, and father of five sons and a daughter, Lazarus Reese started L. Reese & Sons in the late 1920s, going door-to-door in West Philadelphia with lumber to replace rotting porch steps and tongue-and-groove flooring made of yellow pine.

The venture evolved to a truck, a garage, and a contracting office, with such prestigious clients as the University of Pennsylvania and City Hall. After World War II, Lazarus' son Max and Max's brother-in-law Leon Bernstein branched out to the supply side of the construction business, creating West Lumber Co. on Cedar Avenue in West Philadelphia to serve the family construction business and the public.

As a young boy, Stanley often accompanied his father, Max, to work at the lumberyard. He joined West Lumber full time in 1972 after graduating from Pennsylvania Institute of Technology.

L. Reese was peaking. At West Lumber, Stanley Reese, with cousins Mike Reese and Brian Bernstein, were on a growth mission.

"It wasn't a tired old lumberyard like our competition," Stanley Reese said. "We were first to bring in new products." That included pressure-treated lumber and Trex, a polymer composite, as well as battery-operated tools.

But by the 1980s, pressure was bearing down in the form of Mr. Goodbuys, Rickel, and Channel Home Centers. West Lumber responded by providing more localized and specialized services, and by going after more commercial build-outs and tenant fit-outs.

By the time Larry Reese joined the business full time in 1997, West Lumber had two more locations, in Upper Darby and Norwood, and was not profitable. Its bank was threatening to pull a line of credit.

Stanley Reese said the company took the humbling step of hiring a consultant "to help us find our way into the new times." That required closing West Lumber's original location and the Norwood store, and putting Larry Reese, a hotel/restaurant management and business administration major at Drexel, in charge of computerizing operations, centralizing purchasing, and developing a Web presence. An outside sales team replaced a brick-and-mortar emphasis.

In time, Stanley Reese also realized he needed to put some working space between himself and a son who had his own business aspirations. Stanley noticed that the vacant 40,000-square-foot lumberyard at Woodland Avenue and 47th Street was for sale and bought it for $270,000 with his West Lumber partners.

Woodland Building has since added a second location, a warehouse and distribution center on Sedgley Avenue in Juniata Park. Its $10 million-plus in sales have surpassed West Lumber's.

Stanley Reese has an ownership stake but no title.

"But he's the first one I call for advice," said the son he almost fired. "Whether we follow it or not, that's a different story."

dmastrull@phillynews.com

215-854-2466@dmastrull