Editor's Message: Getting in on the Ground Floor

One of the most significant benefits of SBC Magazine’s new online polling approach is it gives component manufacturers (CMs) a glimpse into how their business model and/or local market compares to the industry as a whole. 

A recent poll provides insight into how CMs participate in the structural floor member market. If you are in the component manufacturing business, it is likely they are part of your overall product sales. With almost 150 responses, only one participant indicated they don’t sell structural floor members of any kind.

While 78 percent of respondents indicated they manufacture open-web wood floor trusses, their share of a company’s total structural floor member sales ranged widely from 10-100 percent, with both the mean (average of all the responses) and median (middle of all the responses) at 70 percent.

If open-web wood floor trusses don’t constitute 100 percent of your structural floor member sales, survey responses indicate you likely sell wood I-joists. Sixty percent of respondents said they sell them, with the mean at 10 percent of structural floor sales and the median at 20 percent.

The most complementary products to sell along with structural floor members is floor sheathing. Thirty percent of respondents sell it along with their floor member package, and another ten percent will sell the sheathing if a customer requests it. Most CMs (60 percent) compel their customers to go to another supplier for floor sheathing.

An interesting trend that the survey hints may be emerging over the next few years is sales of partially-assembled floor systems (sometimes called floor panels or floor cassettes). While 70 percent indicated they don’t sell them in their markets, 12 percent currently sell them and an additional 18 percent are considering them given the labor shortage in their market.