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Pretty much everybody have now heard about Lincoln Logs’ bankruptcy filing or Chapter 11 reorganization, as the politically correct term goes. Their attorney said intention is not to lay anyone off and to continue operations as usual while negotiating with creditors.

DOUBT
I don’t know about you guys, but if I would be in financial trouble and asked refinancing from my creditors without changing my consumption habits… well, I doubt there would be any reorganization. Personally I expect to see some jobs go or some asset sales.

SURPRISE
For me it was a surprise to see company as big as Lincoln Logs to hit the brick wall. I know that smaller log home companies have already switched from making log homes into renovations etc.

For the most part, I did expect that fervent log home lovers would have kept the industry going, at least for the big players with good brand names. Guess I was wrong, no matter how dedicated customers you have it all comes down to them also having money.

EFFECT
How would you feel if your supplier told that they are having slight difficulties with creditors? I bet that would make you feel insecure. Are you in the stage of making decision between two manufacturers and having very difficult time choosing one… If the other was Lincoln Logs, your life suddenly became lot easier.

No doubt they will loose orders because of this and if they have difficulties now, just wait few months and they really feel the bit of postponed orders or cancellations. Let’s hope they manage to pull through.

Vinyl siding, vinyl shingle roofing, vinyl roll flooring, vinyl ceiling tiles, vinyl sheet covered drywalls, plastic covered couches, vinyl record player and rubber chicken (what?). Now that is a formula for low cost but dull housing, unless you have all the colours of a rainbow, then we got hideous housing or ginger bread housing. Nobody wants to live in a ginger bread house, but that evil witch. Let’s take a look at something completely different.

Log walls (pine), pine wood shingle roofing, pine wood flooring, pine wood panel ceiling, pine wood panel drywalls, log stairs (pine), log railings (pine), wooden cabinets (pine), wooden doors (pine), wood frame windows (pine)… this isn’t that much different, is it? We got high cost but dull housing solution, but show some paint and rainbow colours you shall have.

That was bit harsh, wasn’t it? It is so easy to go overboard with this log dream that I often have to present some eye opening questions to my customers. If you are thinking to build a log home, no matter what everybody say, you have more options than… wood. One especially bad but common advice is that you can use textiles and other decorative items to make it your own. Please do think about materials first and after that decide on decoration. You’ll thank yourself later.

Brilliant news from Southland Log Homes and DonGardner. Southland is going to start offering floor plans from Donald A. Gardner Architects. The beauty of this alliance comes from combining these two companies’ unique strengths.

Southland’s sales channel has massive reach and they have solid manufacturing, however they have never been the strongest player in custom floor plan log homes, but that’s just the trade-off company has to do with production volumes and time consuming custom floor plans.

Donald A. Gardner delivers floor plans and boy do they have plenty! Company has massive slate of different floor plans and even they might come out as somewhat corporative in their company culture, they sure compensate your trouble with abundant slate of floor plans and good pricing. They do have custom services, but those cost extra.

SOUTHLAND BENEFITS

• Southland doesn’t have to invest heavily on architects, structural designers and floor plan designers.

• Southland gets better slate of floor plans to attract customers from new niches and sales go up (word on the street is that they already have almost overly aggressive sales channel, so watch out when shopping around).

• New floor plans are available almost instantly removing long development plans, making this a swift move over competition.

• Corporate culture in these two companies is very similar and cooperation should be straight forward.

It will be interesting to follow how this affects Southland Log Homes market position. What do you think?