Norfolk building supplier closing after 118 years

NORFOLK

Howard Filer peered out at the mostly empty lumber yard at Norfolk Sash & Door.

All that remained beneath two wood sheds were a couple of loose stacks of lumber.

"This was a busy place at one time," said Filer, president of the family-owned building materials supplier. "Just a few years, ago we had materials piled as high as that gutter."

Today, after 118 years, the company will shut its doors.

As the housing downturn has taken its toll on the region's building industry, business for Norfolk Sash & Door has all but dried up. Demand for the doors, knobs, lumber and framing supplies the company sells has plummeted.

"There are no customers out there," Filer said.

Grover Cleveland was president when the company opened in 1893, and the country was facing a severe economic downturn. Back then, the business operated on the Norfolk waterfront bartering glass, coal, produce, oysters, seafood and grain along the wharf. The company evolved over the years into a sawmill, and eventually to selling lumber and doors.

Filer's grandfather was one of three men who bought the firm in the 1920s. It continued to grow, eventually becoming a full-blown lumber yard.

Norfolk Sash & Door has been located since the 1960s in the Norfolk Industrial Park, where it moved after a fire destroyed its Boissevain Avenue location. Business grew steadily and annual revenues topped $3 million by 1992, a year before its 100th anniversary.

By 2005, at the height of the housing boom, sales rose to $5.5 million.

"We were on top of the world," said Filer, 63, who joined the company in 1973 and took the reins from his father, Rowland, decades ago. "We were doing our best just to keep up with orders. It was a freakish rise to the top of what we thought was success, but it was a cliff.

"And when the bubble popped, I heard it pop loud."

Since its founding, Norfolk Sash & Door has weathered roughly two dozen economic downturns, even the Great Depression. But the most recent one - which has been particularly hard on the housing industry - brought the company to its knees.

Last year, revenue fell below $3 million. Its workforce of 14 is half what it was at the peak a few years ago.

"We had been told things would get better," Filer said of 2010. "But it was still a flat line."

Tired of "treading water," Filer decided to act at the beginning of this year.

"I'm sitting there thinking to myself that this country has bigger problems than I ever realized," he said. "The unthinkable idea of shutting my family company entered my mind."

Filer said he vowed that if, by June, business did not improve, he would close.

Two weeks ago, Filer drove out to Virginia Beach to break the news to his 88-year-old father, who lives in a retirement community.

"It was raining hard, and the rain was coming out of my eyes," Filer said.

His father told him it was better to close now before things got worse.

"When I left, the last thing he said to me was don't embarrass or humiliate the company's name with the way you end the business," Filer said. "Don't end in bankruptcy."

Last week, letters went out to customers informing them that Norfolk Sash would be closing.

Among the first customers to hear the news was Virginia Beach builder Jim Sykes.

"I can't tell you how sad I am that that business is closing," he said. "They were our supplier of choice and really intertwined with our business."

Sykes said he's been buying building materials from Norfolk Sash & Door for three decades.

"But more than that, the relationships we formed over the years were important," he said. "If they did anything well, it was customer service. They never let us down. It's a way of doing business that I'm afraid is going away."

Luke Kellam, a builder on the Eastern Shore, has been a customer for 10 years. He said the past few years have been tough on builders, but working with Filer and the employees of Norfolk Sash & Door was a bright spot.

"He has been my sounding board," Kellam said. "Whenever I'd have a bad hair day, he was the guy I'd call."

In recent days, Filer said, he's been trying to find jobs for his workers, some of whom have been with the company for decades.

"I've called every construction yard in a 50-mile radius," he said. "I want to give every employee a soft landing."

After shutting its doors today, Filer will spend the next few weeks selling off any inventory and company supplies that are left. He plans to donate some of the materials to nonprofits and religious groups and eventually sell the property.

Filer also plans to find new work, but for now he's more concerned with tying up loose ends.

"I really hate to see the company go."

Josh Brown, (757) 446-2318, josh.brown@pilotonline.com