R.P. Lumber honored with Retail Beacon award
Shown from left are Orgill CEO Boyden Moore, R.P. Lumber Vice President Jason Plummer holding the company’s recently received Beacon Award, and Orgill Corporate Account Manager Chris Bunch. (Courtesy R.P. Lumber Co.)
R.P. Lumber Co. in Edwardsville, Ill., was honored as a Beacon Award winner during the Beacon Awards banquet held Friday, Aug. 18. The Beacon Awards are a premier national industry awards program developed by The Hardware Connection magazine and The Hardware Conference to recognize the “best of the best” independent hardware/home improvement retailers in the United States.
The Beacon Awards are sponsored by Epicor Software Corp., Ettore Products Company, and Fluidmaster, with wholesaler sponsorship support from Orgill and other wholesalers.
“R.P. Lumber is very worthy of its inclusion in the 2023 class of Beacon honorees,” stated Chris Jensen, editor/founder/principal of The Hardware Connection, the hardware industry’s leading digital publication. “The Plummer family has a long tradition of giving back to the communities they serve.”
“We are truly honored to be the 2023 Retail Beacon nominee by Orgill,” said Jason Plummer, vice president of R.P. Lumber. “We are grateful to Orgill and to the entire team at The Hardware Connection and The Hardware Conference. Being named a Retail Beacon is truly an industry honor and reflects the hard work and commitment of our hundreds of great R.P. team members and our company’s many great vendors and partners,” he added.
The Hardware Connection is the only magazine designed and distributed solely in an electronic format for independent hardware retailers. With a circulation of nearly 60,000, the magazine has been honored with 16 awards for editorial excellence in the past nine years. The Hardware Conference, now in its 35th year, is the industry’s largest gathering of independent hardware retailers regardless of wholesaler affiliation and is held in Marco Island, Fla.
R.P. Lumber Company was founded in 1977 by Robert and Donna Plummer in Staunton, Ill. A family-owned business, it operates over 80 full-service hardware and building material stores and two truss manufacturing facilities in five states.
Each retail location is a full-service home center and building materials supplier that offers lumber, kitchen cabinets, paint, windows, doors, hardware, plumbing, electrical, drywall, roofing supplies, tools, and much more. Serving both DIYers and contractors, R.P. Lumber provides full-service delivery, kitchen cabinet design, deck design, and blueprint takeoffs.
R.P. Lumber has invested in technology to improve operational efficiencies and drive traffic online. The company offers a robust e-commerce platform and is constantly investing in and upgrading its IT operations to obtain more data and leverage that data to better serve customers and strengthen the company.
In 2022, the company upgraded its Epicor POS system across all locations. The company has remodeled six locations this year, focusing on a better retail consumer experience, and has added over 250,000 square feet of warehouse space across all stores in the last 12 months. R.P. Lumber is rolling out new kitchen and deck design programs at dozens of store locations in 2023 and 2024.
In all communities where R.P. Lumber has stores, it shows its support continually by investing in local organizations such as law enforcement, youth sports, churches, and many other causes. It was a recent major contributor to the R.P. Lumber Center recreational complex located in Edwardsville, Ill. The company also helped fund the all-ages Plummer Family Sports Park, an 83-acre tournament-quality facility featuring lighted, full-synthetic turf baseball and softball fields, pickleball courts, and nine full-size multisport fields for soccer, football, rugby, lacrosse, and more.
In March, R.P. Lumber was honored as the 2022 Large Business of The Year by the city of Edwardsville. As a family-owned, full-service retail home center and building materials supplier. R.P. Lumber Co. Inc. offers full-service delivery, complete hardware stores, lumber, drywall, roofing, deck design, cabinet design, and much more for professional contractors and homeowners alike. R.P. Lumber has grown to a physical presence in locations throughout Illinois, Missouri, Wyoming, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The company also operates two truss manufacturing facilities and a robust ecommerce platform offering nearly 100,000 items for sale with the click of a button.
This story also appears in the September 2023 print edition of the Illinois Business Journal.
