Photo: Hardwoods
Hardwoods continues its expansion on the West Coast with another leading building products distributor in California.
Hardwoods Distribution Inc. (HDI) has, through its subsidiary Hardwoods Specialty Products US LP, purchased Aura Hardwoods.
Aura operates six locations across Northern California: Modesto, Rancho Cordova, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, Fresno, and Santa Cruz.
“As part of our overall strategic plan for California, we combined two well-established, highly reputable companies – Aura and Hardwoods – to drive accelerated growth,” said Hardwoods vice president, Dan Besen.
“Along with our other recent acquisitions, Far West Plywood (January 2019) and Diamond Hardwoods (March 2020), our combined California footprint of 12 branches provides us a much better platform to be the premier distributor of architectural building products to both the design and millwork community throughout California. Additionally, the alignment in values and culture between the two companies was also a key determining factor in pursuing this fantastic opportunity,” Besen said.
Aura opens its doors for business today under the Hardwoods brand name, and will operate as part of the Hardwoods Northern California Group led by General Manager,
Mike Couture. Together with senior general manager of California, Nick Smith, they are responsible for optimizing Hardwoods’ expanding California business.
The Hardwoods acquisition of Aura Hardwoods reflects one component of its long-term growth strategy. Over half of HDI’s annualized sales today come from acquired businesses, and over the last two years it has added over $150 million in annualized sales to the top line. The acquisitions pipeline is active and with HDI’s continued balance sheet strength, it intends to pursue additional transactions.
Family run for over 42 years, Aura Hardwoods began as a single site small retail company and has grown into one of Northern California's largest and most respected wholesale distributors of hardwood lumber and related products.
With 34 distribution centers strategically located across the United States and Canada,
Hardwoods is uniquely positioned to provide customers with a wide variety of decorative surfaces including architectural grade plywood, veneers, domestic and imported hardwood lumber, TFL, HPL, synthetics, and composites. For more than nine decades, its success has been centered on creating value throughout the supply chain by working collaboratively with vendors, architects, designers, fabricators, and consumers.
HDI is North America’s largest distributor of architectural grade building products to the residential and commercial construction markets. The Company operates a North
American network of 71 distribution centers doing business as: Hardwoods Specialty
Products, the Frank Paxton Lumber Company and Rugby Architectural Building
Products. HDI has three specialty groups providing added support to the distribution centers: DesignOneSource provides specification support, HDI Import Lumber for the provision of exotics, and a sawmill and kiln drying operation, Hardwoods of Michigan.
