People of the Year: Floyd Sherman
The second annual HBSDealer People of the Year list includes some heavy hitters in the home improvement industry. These are executives who have displayed outside-the-box thinking, along with stick-to-your-guns discipline. They are the leaders of billion-dollar corporations, as well as family businesses. They are guiding huge mergers, and huge acts of charity.
In the next several issues of the HBSDealer Daily, we'll meet all of HBSDealer's People of the Year.
It’s hardly a question that Floyd Sherman is a man of the hour, if not the man.
After getting a game-changing deal on the books this summer with Builders FirstSource’s completed acquisition of ProBuild Holdings, the combined company is now officially the largest LBM dealer around, a $6 billion company.
“With 50-plus years in the industry, I don’t think I’ve seen a more exciting time to be in this industry,” Sherman said during his acceptance speech at the 2015 ProDealer of the Year ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in October.
A third victory round of sorts was had at the end of a successful third quarter, which brought in adjusted net income of $34.7 million, compared with $15.8 million a year ago and in the face of price deflation and labor shortages. The addition of ProBuild, said Sherman, will be a boon and counterweight to these forces for shareholders and customers.
Despite his position at the helm of what is now a 500-unit dealer in 40 states, however, Sherman kept his speech focused on the culture that supported the company through the recession — and will continue to shape the direction it takes in its path toward scale and diversification.
“Through the worst of times, our employees sacrificed like never before,” he said. “They showed character and integrity and discipline as they performed two or three jobs just to keep the lights on. Our loyal customers and suppliers stuck by us, many of which are in this room tonight. We were there for each other, working side by side, doing everything we could to survive. Through the worst of times, our people never quit; they never lost hope. Our people never stopped believing and dreaming about what we could be.”