Build-e to launch distribution business by end of 2001 - Built-e Inc - Brief Article

Home Channel News, June 18, 2001

Environmental Home Center parent will keep Seattle store but look to open two-step warehouses

SEATTLE -- Built-e, corporate parent of the Environmental Home Center and e-commerce site www.built e.com, is planning to open a distribution center here this year that would serve as a testing ground for the company's next venture -- the development of a two-step distribution business.

Former Laird Norton executive Tim Taylor, who now serves as Builte's president and CEO, said he hopes to develop the company into the country's leading distributor of sustainable building products to lumber and building material retailers.

"Our expansion plans are in cities that have expressed interest in green building practices," Taylor explained, pointing specifically to San Francisco, Denver and Austin, Texas. "First we thought about building more retail stores, but we quickly decided against it."

Built-e's co-owners -- Taylor, Matthew Freeman-Gleason, the former builder who founded EHC; and Michael Alfstad, an investment banker who is now Built-e's chief operating officer -- instead decided that the company's greater opportunity lies in distribution, not retail. Its expansion plan centers on opening facilities that would sell green building materials to other dealers and using its Internet presence and catalog business to sell to both consumers and builders outside EHC's greater Seattle marketplace.

Built-e hopes to have its Seattle DC open by year's end. Then it plans to open distribution facilities in several of the following cities (in no particular order): Portland, San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta and Austin.

Environmental Home Center, founded in 1991 and originally on Bainbridge Island in Washington, is a 9,000-square-foot home improvement store whose 3,500 skus are mostly eco-friendly and sustainable building materials. Sample product lines include plant-based paints and wood finishes, cork flooring, lumber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and natural cleaning products. The Seattle store will re main open, Taylor said, to serve as a real-life testing ground for products as well as retail merchandising techniques.

The retail store business evolved into Built-e last summer when Taylor and Alfstad joined Freeman-Gleason as investment partners and expanded the scope of the operation. Since then, Built-e has amassed more than $2.5 million to fund its expansion drive and has added prominent members of the green building and lumber and building products industries to its team.

The company hired as its vp-business and policy development Lynee Barker, former sustainable construction manager for Sellen Construction, one of the region's larger builders. Barker, who sits on several green building standards organizations, visits builders to explain sustainable building practices and Built-e's offerings. Built-e also named Jim Quinn, former CEO of Oregon and California-based timber supplier Collins Pine, to its board. Collins Pine was one of the first forest products companies to embrace FSC's certification scheme.