Case Study: Carl’s Building Supply boosts margins and cuts processing time with Spruce from ECI Software Solutions

Spruce Software Brings Major Gains on Multiple Levels

Carl’s Building Supply, a lumber yard in Port Hadlock, Washington, was struggling with a cumbersome legacy system (Advantage), slow daily processes, difficult special-order management, and antiquated accounting. In 2013 they replaced it with Spruce from ECI Software Solutions to modernize point-of-sale, document management and pricing controls.

ECI Software Solutions’ Spruce automated special-order pricing (40+ S/O templates with target margins), linked customer orders to vendor POs and invoices, added secure credit-card tokenization, and streamlined statements and document workflows. The impact: sales are up 84% (market-assisted) while headcount grew only from 23 to 28; inventory turns rose by 0.5–1 turn; gross margins improved ~200 basis points (26.8% to 28.16%); overall profitability increased ~4% of sales (with 1/3–1/2 attributed to Spruce); special-order margins grew 3%; order assembly time fell to one-fifth and statement processing dropped from a full day to two hours, plus faster, PCI-compliant checkout.

Carl’s Building Supply

Kyle Kincaid

Chief Financial Officer