The Mill #9 – RMFP’s Brand Strategy and How To Create Your Own (Part 2)

The Mill #9 – RMFP’s Brand Strategy and How To Create Your Own (Part 2)

So just to kind of catch everyone up. Our vision is building relationships in every single facet, right? Whether that is our vendors, whether that is our clients or whether that is with our employees within the organization and how we’re going to do it is we’re going to become the best building supplier that exists. They’re doing the right things until they pull Rocky Mountain Forest Products. And this is today’s The Mill. So this is part two of walking through our brand strategy, for Rocky Mountain Forest Products or brand strategy all the way up. Through our content strategy and how we pull it through part one of this. If you didn’t see it, we’ll put it in the link in the description.

So where can you go? Start from the beginning if you want to see the first part, part one, where we discussed the difference between a vision statement, a mission statement, and how that pulls through in our brand pyramid. Thank you so much, Tye. I really appreciate it. So starting off, we’re going to be discussing our five pillars on the brand pyramid and kind of what Rocky Mountains burnt things up.

But so just to kind of catch everyone up, our vision is building relationships in every single facet, whether that is our vendors, whether that is our clients or whether that is with our employees within the organization and how we’re going to do it is we’re going to become the best building supplier.

It exists by doing the right things, but being ethical, by being honest, like doing the right things, because doing the right things is always right. So what does that necessarily mean? What is a pillar of your business? Well, it’s simple. A pillar is one of the defining things in your business that you stand out.

And what’s important when I write these up here, here in a second for Rocky, is that these pillars will sit underneath your vision and your mission. If these five pillars don’t describe how you’re actually going to achieve these, then you probably need to work on them. The other side of that is everything that you do, you need to make sure that like everything below on the pyramid, whether it’s your target audiences, whether it’s your shows, your shows, which is also your content is what that is. It touches at least two of these five pillars, because if you’re not touching two of the five pillars, then you’re actually off-brand, off your vision, off of your mission.

So Rocky Mountains pillars are pretty decent and well decent. That’s funny. I think they’re decent because they’re us, but you can let me know. So our first one that we have is integrity. I hope I can spell these rights. Start integrity. It’s simple. The way that I best have learned about what integrity means is doing what’s right.

Even when nobody else is watching. This is important to us. This comes down to where do we buy our material from? The majority of things that we purchase at Rocky, we make a really good point to make sure that we’re buying from places that have an emphasis on sustainability.

It’s extremely important in the lumber world because of the fact that we’re utilizing our force as crops. Now one of the things that we don’t talk about all the time that doesn’t get noticed, but for the most part in North America, for every tree that’s cut down, three have to be planted back.

Certain States are even more than that. Some are nine 91, some are 12 to one, certain ones are six to one, but it’s important to make sure that we’re putting our force back as we’re utilizing them to build buildings. And so everything that we do, we focus on integrity from our sales, from our guard guys across sport. It’s important to rocket.

Our second one is our transparency. We have nothing to hide. So in our world, the reason why we’ve one of the things that has made us special over time is that we buy, probably more North of 80% of our products are mill direct. We cut out the middleman. There’s no middleman markup in our stuff. We buy from the place that actually mills the product and we sell it directly to you and we’re open about it.

And we have two different price programs. We have one for retail customers, and we have one for contractors and it’s as simple as that. And you don’t see it as much anymore. Excuse me. But there were times in the past where people had different kickback programs and all these different things and, and to us, it’s important that if you need a discount to kind of fit some material into a budget and I don’t have room on it, I was just telling you, man, I don’t have that on this deal.

We don’t have it on this specific material. Other times you come back, but hey, I’m in a really tight spot because of this, can you help me out? All right. And we have the ability to help you out on it. Our sales guys, and you can ask any one of them, if they can help you out on it, because you need it.

They’re going to do what’s right by our customers. They’re going to help because of those relationships. It’s the transparency. We don’t have anything to hide over at Rocky. We’re not swapping grades. We’re not calling something this type of material when it’s something else, this is important to us.

And this is one of those things that over the years, I’m not going to say we always did the best job at it, but we realized that the more transparent we were, and the more integrity that we held, the better our business ran and the more money we made and the less fights we ever had.

Businesses aren’t perfect people. People are messy by nature, but we’ve been around for 45 years. And these two things, the reason they’re number one or number two is because they’re kind of the most important things to us. Number three, we call it being human. And it means a couple different things. But it’s on one side, we want to take something, for our retail customers. We want to take a very daunting industry like building materials because most of our clients from a retail standpoint are only buying our products once every 10, 20, 30 years, because they do last so long.

You’re not replacing your deck every summer. Hopefully you’re not replacing your fence every year as well, too. And so building materials, it’s kind of like buying a car. It’s kinda like buying a home. You’re nervous because it’s a big expense and it’s about something that you don’t shop for everyday. So you’re not quite sure how long something’s going to hold up with the prop or the actual prices versus quality, all these different things. And so we want to make sure that bill of materials isn’t scary and it’s approachable for contractors for different architects explaining what you’re doing.

We have to build the wall this way, because it is lit. Now we have to build this wall this way, because there are codes that exist and are meant to keep you safe. From the building collapsing from all from natural disasters for fire ratings, explaining through why your industry is technical, why your craft is technical because not everybody understands those things.

Not everybody comes from the same background that we are. And we have to understand that, yes, we may think this material is perfect for this person’s job, but they read somewhere online that this one was. And it’s like, no, I understand that the majority of the United States can use a treated decking board.

But in Colorado, you’re going to be replacing it in probably two years max, because it’s going to try out chip flakes, crack break, and then you’re going to be out a lot of money and you’re gonna have to come back and buy Cedar. It’s just being human and explaining it and you can still help people, but it’s that’s important.

The other thing that we talked about with BNP, one deals more with our contractors and our internal culture. The phrase we use with this is be someone you want in the room. And it is as simple as we don’t want our employees gossiping to each other about each other. If there is a struggle that’s going on, we want people to go talk to each other directly and work it out.

If we are having a disagreement on a specific project with a contractor directly it’s hey, man, I know this sucks for you. I know this sucks for us. What can we do?  Where is this middle point where I can help you get what you need done and fix it. And at the same time, like we can take care of what we need to, because there’s always two sides to every story.

And there’s always a middle point. And so being human, caring about people is important to us at Rocky Mountain. One of the things that we are extremely proud of within our marketing is our knowledge in business. 45 years, I can tell you all the different ways certain material works in Colorado’s climate and certain material. It doesn’t. No matter what it is, whether it’s fencing, siding, decking. If you’re an electrician, if you’re a plumber, if you’re a carpenter, if you’re a landscaper, if you are a company that manufactures corrugated steel, your knowledge is important because you study your craft.

You do what you do because you care about it. That’s where the whole idea of true craftsmen comes in. That’s sort of tradecraft industries. We’re in this building, the term trade craft. It’s a little nuance that you pick up over mastering a skill that they don’t teach in school, but they don’t teach in a classroom.

They don’t teach in a classroom that treated decking boards aren’t necessarily going to perform well in Colorado because of our area climate, because of our mass temperature fluctuations, but 85% of the United States. He gets installed every single day. And it is wonderful. Those are some of the things that you learn over 45 years of experience, that’s important to Rocky.

So it’s when you’re going through these things, it’s like, okay, these ones are kind of more moral. Things are cultural. This is a cultural thing. Now we’re getting kind of into the nuts and bolts of the tactical things. Are you going to be somebody who really prides himself on their nose? Maybe you pride yourself on beauty or design or sustainability.

There’s lots of different things that, something like this could be ours, is just our knowledge over 45 years, because we’re a damn old, the last thing for us that makes us different. It’s our product.

Sounds silly, super service level, excuse me. But the reason our products are important to us is because of how we buy, we buy mill direct and we buy quarry direct on our stone, and it’s important to us. It’s kind of funny, the reason why this is so great is because multiple decades ago, This was just allowing us to function as a company.

If we bought mill direct and increased our margins, what’s really just allowed us to be able to compete against some of the big box stores and much larger organizations and be able to stay in business and run a local company. Ironically, fast forward, three decades cutting out the middleman is actually cool in our culture.

So we kind of fell into that one. But what’s great about this is because of these long term relationships, which are building relationships by being the best material supplier, because we started building those relationships through our integrity and our transparency with our vendors. And because of our knowledge, now we’re able to supply products that get installed at the Stanley hotel because we have completed the entire supply chain.

This one for us, it’s a different differentiator. What makes your business, your organization slightly different?  We’ve got these big building materials companies that exist today. Multiple. Most of them have been around for hundreds of years. I bet you, they should have shit, got some knowledge. I guarantee you, they do.

They have some relationships. And when it comes to their products, some of these guys were the original people who developed. Press board, somebody’s guys, original people who develop ways to plant seedlings to make sure that they turn into crops. This is a differentiator. Are you an architect that really focuses on mid century, modern?

This is all you do. Are you a landscape for it? And you’re like, no, I am a hundred percent the zeroscape guy. I can tell you everything about every ounce of water that you waste in your yard. Are you the rougher who’s like now these shingles do wonderful here and here and here on these temperatures.

But because your house faces South and we get all the Southern exposure, if you don’t want to be replacing those shingles in five to 10 years, you take the extra 8% upgrade and you upgrade to these because these ones are going to last you the 25 that are spent on the warranty.

There’s so many nuances to everybody’s business. There’s so many nuances to everybody’s trade and finding your five pillars that are important to you. Like you said at Rocky,  here’s our moral things. Here’s our cultural things. Here’s our differentiators as a business.

These are the special things that just make us who we are. You are.

So that’s kind of wrapping up the purpose of the five pillars at Rocky. You can kind of sit down and think through, what are your five boxes? Thank you, Tye, for putting that back up. I really appreciate it. What are your five pillars of your business that all of your marketing is going to take through to your mission statement and your vision statement that was backwards.

There’s your statement and your mission statement. So, stay tuned for our part three of walking through brand and content strategy. Once again, my name is Taylor Poole and this was today’s Mill.