Local lumber wholesaler Hawkeye Distribution enters millwork field

The move followed Hawkeye's purchase about a year ago of a Rock Island, Ill. millwork firm that traces its roots to the late 1800s.

"What we're doing is bringing some of their knowledge over here," Hawkeye Distribution president William Engelen said.

Engelen said the expansion into millwork allows the company to diversify and better serve its large network of lumberyards.

In order to service the lumber dealers, we just need to get more products on our trucks," Engelen said. With the exception of cabinets, Hawkeye Distribution can now "pretty much furnish everything" that goes into building a home, he said.

Buying most or all their products from a single source allows smaller lumber dealers to better compete with the growing number of big box retailers, said Glenn Brunick, the manager of the millwork department. "It's an opportunity to be more for the dealers that still exist out there in rural America," he said

Hawkeye Distribution delivery trucks make runs carrying both millwork and building materials. "It's easy for the dealers to unload," Brunick said. "They don't have to have docks. It comes right off the side of the truck"

Engelen noted Hawkeye Distribution carries one of the largest inventories of millwork products in the region. Among the brands it deals with are Weathershield, CertainTeed, Owens Corning, Woodport and Larson. A small showroom at Hawkeye Distribution's headquarters, 620 Floyd Blvd., displays many of the products, giving both dealers and their customers a chance to check out the offerings for themselves.

"We've got good product lines," Engelen said. "We're stressing a really high-quality product."

Brunick said one of the company's niches is wood doors, with more than 35 choices beyond the traditional flat panel or six-panel oak doors. Style and rail doors are available in oak, maple, cherry, poplar, birch and decorative glass.

All the doors are prehung at Hawkeye Distribution's plant in Rock Island, located on the Illinois side of the Quad Cities. That's also where the firm maintains the majority of its door inventory. Eventually, the company hopes to build a similar plant in Sioux City, Brunick said.

Hawkeye Distribution serves more than 1,000 accounts in a sprawling distribution area that includes all of Iowa, eastern Nebraska, southeast South Dakota, southwest Minnesota, western Illinois and a small chunk of northern Missouri.

In 1997, Engelen acquired the former Hawkeye Building Supply from Tom and Bill Burke, whose father founded the business in 1945 in Sioux City. Prior to the sale, Engelen was serving as company president, and has worked at Hawkeye for more than 20 years.

In 2000, the company adopted the Hawkeye Distribution name in an attempt to better reflect the company's broad line of products and services.

Brunick, who has more than 30 years of millwork experience, was tapped by Engelen to lead the company's efforts into that field. A 1972 graduate of Riverside High School, Brunick started his career at Payless Cashways in Sioux City, where he worked for 15 years. After leaving his hometown in 1979, he spent 10 years with Menards, serving as a buyer of doors and windows and managing a local store. He later spent five years as a millwork buyer for Home Depot. In 1996, he and his family returned to Siouxland, and he commuted to Home Depot's buying offices in Chicago. He later opened Home Depot stores in Omaha and Des Moines, and hoped to eventually manage the store the national chain proposed for Sioux City. After that plan fell through, he hooked up with Engelen and Hawkeye.

Hawkeye's customers have been receptive to the line of windows, doors and moldings, which appeared in a company catalog for the first time last June, Bruning said. In the last year, millwork sales alone have doubled, he said.

"And, we anticipate sales doubling again this time next year," he said.

Dave Dreeszen can be reached at (712) 293-4211 or davedreeszen@siouxcityjournal.com