Page Lumber Becomes 1,000th Member of the Century Club
Doug Donaldson
Page Lumber CEO, Mark Whitney
Founded in 1924, Page Lumber in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., reached the milestone of turning 100 years old and joining the elite ranks of other hardware industry stalwarts.
Page Lumber has helped build New York’s Hudson Valley. This January, Page helped the Hardware Connection Century Club reach a significant milestone of 1,000 members.
Page Lumber’s flagship store is a 20,000-square-foot home center on the east side of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Page Lumber’s roots in the region run deep. The company’s founder, Henry G. Page Sr., was born on the very site of the lumberyard’s current location in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., about 80 miles north of New York City.
Before becoming a state-of-the-art home center and lumberyard, the site was the Manchester Hotel, which Samuel McCabe acquired and passed down to his daughter, Mary McCabe and her husband, Gustavas Page. Together, the couple repurposed the hotel into G. Page Groceries.
On Route 55 in Poughkeepsie, Page Lumber has helped build the Hudson Valley for 100 years.
Page Lumber’s tool corral houses several major power tool brands and related accessories. When the store was reset in 2011, Page Lumber’s distributor, Orgill, assisted in the design and merchandising of the tool corral.
In 1924, Henry Page Sr. bought a cement block-making machine from Sears and Roebuck and started making concrete blocks. Even today, visitors to the lumberyard on Route 55 to the east of Poughkeepsie can see the same type of aggregate that Page Sr. used to found this business. Today, the company is run by a board made up of the family’s third generation along with CEO Mark Whitney, a 32-year veteran of the retail hardware industry with stints at Curtis Lumber, Avon Wholesale Supply and Brockway-Smith Company.
Company founder Henry Page Sr. was born on the site of the company’s current flagship store in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Formula for Longevity
Whitney credits Page Lumber’s longevity to one of the company’s mantras: Help customers be successful. To better serve customers, Whitney says Page Lumber staff constantly ask: What are we doing that’s beyond just providing a product?
About 80 percent of Page Lumber’s customers are professional contractors and builders. The Poughkeepsie location has a dedicated contractor entrance and large space devoted to assisting pro customers.
“We make a lot of decisions to provide support and service to some of the smaller business people who would otherwise struggle to be able to do so on their own,” Whitney says. “We can bring some scale to those things.”
Some examples of that support Whitney cites include estimating, 3D modeling and takeoffs. He says that the 3D versions of construction plans provide a detail that helps contractor and builder customers beyond the estimating process and into the construction process as well.
“I think it’s a significant thing that we get to help people experience the American dream,” Whitney says. “That’s something. We’re not just selling lumber and hardware and paint. We’re helping people really experience something that’s very important in their lives.”
Page Lumber CEO Mark Whitney is a 32-year veteran of the retail hardware industry and brings a collaborative spirit to his management style.
