Two towns, two states, 70 years independent
How an Idaho lumberyard started shipping to 17 states
Moscow & Pullman's Pros were loyal, and slow to adopt technology. A new Home Depot was opening down the road. So the yard put quoting and ordering online.
Lumber and building materials · Moscow, ID and Pullman, WA
What changed
- ~50%
- Of online quotes & orders from outside local market
- 1,200+
- Pro account sign ups
- 150+
- Pros paying bills online
- $1.5M+
- In annual online payment volume
Figures reported by Moscow & Pullman Building Supply.
The challenge
For decades, Pro accounts at Moscow & Pullman ran on handshakes. Contractors came in, saw the whites of your eyes, and paid their bills in person. It worked, because it was what customers expected, and nobody was asking for anything else.
Then that began to change. Even the most traditional contractors were running the rest of their lives from their phones. And in March 2024, a Home Depot opened in town.
"How do we compete with them?" Alan Espenschade, Director of Operations, remembers asking. "To offer a tool and a service now that a Home Depot has, or that Lowe's has."
The back office hadn't changed in years either. A customer handed over a card, someone keyed the balance into a standalone terminal, swiped it, printed a receipt and recorded it, and the batch closed at the end of the day. The next morning, each payment was applied to its account by hand in BisTrack.
What Alan wanted was that kind of convenience without losing the personal relationships that set the yard apart.
The solution
Alan first met Erik Bornstein, Toolbx's founder, at a conference about three years ago. They sat next to each other at breakfast and got talking.
“Had no idea when we sat with Erik that he was an owner, operator, founder," Alan recalls. "He was just a guy that was easy to communicate with, that had some ideas and showed genuine interest in what we were doing.”
Moscow & Pullman had looked at other options, and none of them had excited the team. Alan describes working with Toolbx as "personal, easy, and very transparent."
The feedback I've gotten from the Pro sales guys I talked to is that they love that they can get on, they love that they can see their statements, and they love that they can pay through ACH, particularly, because that saves everybody a little bit of money.
Alan EspenschadeDirector of OperationsWhat Moscow & Pullman Building Supply turned on
Moscow & Pullman runs Toolbx on top of BisTrack, its ERP:
“Modify an order in BisTrack and within seconds the payment adjusts in Toolbx. It's seamless. It's brilliant.”
Pro portal
contractors log in to see their transaction history, statements and their own pricing.
Online payments
Pros pay their balances by ACH or card, and payments land in BisTrack without manual reconciliation.
E-commerce
the full catalog is online, with buy online, pick up in store.
Online quoting
customers request quotes on the website, and the quotes reach BisTrack for the sales team to work.
Customer messages
texts to the yard's business number land in one shared inbox the whole team can work from, replacing a mix of Facebook and email.
ERP integration
orders and payments reach BisTrack without anyone entering them twice.
We are getting customer requests from all over the country now. We've shipped product to something like 17 different states. And we have Toolbx to thank for that.
Alan EspenschadeDirector of OperationsThe results
Fourth-generation builders, paying online
Many of Moscow & Pullman's contractors are fourth- and fifth-generation builders, used to coming in, standing in line and paying in person. Getting them to change seemed unlikely. Today more than 150 Pros pay their bills through the portal, and the yard processes more than $1.5 million a year online.
A sheetrock corner for Vermont
The bigger surprise was where new orders came from. About half of online quotes and orders now come from outside the local market. The yard has shipped to 17 states, from Vermont to Colorado to Oregon, and fields questions about shipping coast to coast around ten times a week.
Most of them start the same way: someone can't find a product near home. A builder in South Hero, Vermont needed eight-foot galvanized bullnose sheetrock corners and couldn't find them anywhere on the East Coast. He found them on Moscow & Pullman's website.
A customer in Colorado Springs was hunting for a discontinued Honda power trimmer. He found it listed on Moscow & Pullman's website, but when the team went to pull it, there were none left in stock. He wasn't going to take no for an answer, and neither was Alan, who drove across town to a competitor, found one, and shipped it to Colorado. The customer left a five-star review and said he'd never seen a company try so hard.
Mornings in accounts receivable
Jess Webb in accounts receivable used to start every day by applying the previous day's in-person payments to each account, one at a time. Now those payments reach BisTrack on their own.
"She knows there are going to be fewer of them coming through the door,” Alan says. “They're just paying online."
Someone on the other end of the text
When a contractor texts Moscow & Pullman, the message goes to the yard's business number, the one they've always called. It doesn't land on anyone's personal phone. It lands in a shared inbox in Toolbx, where anyone on the team can see the conversation, pick it up and act on it, from checking an order to sending a payment request. One team member works it full time, and anyone else can step in. Contractors have noticed, Alan says. When they need a quick answer, they tell the team the local yard is ahead.
The staff sell it at the counter
Change is usually hardest inside the building. Alan says that wasn't the case here. When a customer walks in, staff mention pickup in store, explain the portal and encourage contractors to try it.
“People who care about our success and love to see us evolve—they're jumping in with their boots on to make it happen.”
Looking ahead
The contractors Moscow & Pullman serves are fourth- and fifth-generation builders, and many of the relationships go back as far. Now there are new ones, with customers in Vermont, Colorado and Oregon who had a good experience and are likely to come back. Over time, Alan thinks, that could become a meaningful share of sales.
Some of it is still being worked out, especially shipping oversized items. But a local lumberyard with 70 years of relationships can now serve customers anywhere in the country, and it hasn't had to give up what made people buy from it in the first place.
If another dealer asked us if Toolbx was worth partnering up with, I would tell them every single day, absolutely 100%.
Alan EspenschadeDirector of Operations
