Cinda Jones welcomes a visitor to her pleasantly cluttered office, a farmhand’s bedroom some 60 years ago, reachable via a flight of creaky steps in what used to be a barn. The structure is attached to the homestead built by her ancestor David Cowls (pronounced “Coles”) in what is now Amherst, a Western Massachusetts college town. Nine generations of the family have lived in the house, which was erected in 1768; it has also always served as the headquarters of the family’s forestry company, W.D. Cowls Inc. The family farm is even older than the home; it dates from 1741. Over the years, among other activities, the family has grown crops, raised animals, operated a dairy, produced sand and gravel, run a sawmill and retail store and managed forestland on its properties. Cinda, 43, has been president of W.D. Cowls since 2007.
She gazes out the window, which overlooks a western corner of her family’s property—60 acres of former farm and timberland. “I can see the trolley tracks that used to go down this street,” she says, pointing down a country road lined with red barns. Her ancestors helped build the trolley more than 100 years ago during horse-and-buggy times, to transport people in and around the community and later products to nearby towns. “I can also see the new North Amherst Village Center.”
But the trolley doesn’t exist today; it hasn’t run since the 1930s. The last of its tracks were torn out in the 1970s, though the red barn that housed trolley cars still stands.
And the new North Amherst Village Center? That exists only in Cinda’s imagination and on blueprints—so far.
Big challenges and big plans
Cinda and her brother, Evan, 41—who heads the subsidiary retail operation, Cowls Building Supply, located down the road—have faced big challenges. In 2002, their former sawmill building was hit by lightning and burned to the ground. In recent years, their retail store has found itself vying with big-box competitors Home Depot and Lowe’s, which opened in neighboring Hadley. But instead of taking a defensive posture, the Jones siblings seem fearless and determined to keep their enterprise in the family.
W.D. Cowls can afford to undertake ambitious projects, as the overall company has remained profitable despite competition and the economic downturn. Over time, however, lumber manufacturing has gone from very profitable to unprofitable, while the retail operation has gained in strength and now does better than other parts of the business. “That will change again over time,” says Cinda, who sees the most future profit potential in real estate management.
“When families are land-based, there is often a very heartfelt attachment to that land that makes some or all of the family want to make sure that it stays in the family,” notes Pat Frishkoff, a Eugene, Ore.-based family business consultant who has worked closely with many family farms around the world. “With a product like trees, you’re definitely looking at the long run,” Frishkoff says. “So they’ve got a long-term, sustainable, renewable product to serve as financial underlay. This can allow them to do other kinds of creative business diversification and building.”
The Joneses have ambitious plans: to develop a 30-acre tract of industrial/farm land north of downtown into mixed-use residential and retail establishments, in what they describe as an “agrarian chic” style that would preserve the local historic mill and farm feel. They hope to lease their 14,400-square-foot sawmill building, which was rebuilt after the fire but closed last year, as an anchor business, such as a restaurant, retail establishment or performance venue. The family also would like to lease commercial lots around the existing mill building.
While their plans dovetail with the town’s vision of expanding the existing, but modest, North Amherst Village Center, to proceed they need Amherst’s Town Meeting members to approve a rezoning plan, which they hope will happen this winter. In the meantime, Cowls has been seeking real estate development partners and commercial tenants.
The company is no stranger to development. Previous generations had a hand in building some of the town’s historic buildings, such as the North Amherst library and church. As children, Cinda and Evan watched as their father, uncle and cousins built the retail store, a nearby strip mall and apartment buildings.
Cinda says she and Evan had no previous hands-on education or experience in real estate, but “it’s like second nature to me.” Sitting at a large wooden round table in a meeting room on the first floor, they describe their plans. Their comments are well-rehearsed; they have made many similar presentations to potential tenants and town leaders over the past two years.
Cinda, who favors large belt buckles and cowboy boots, today wears a short denim skirt and white tank top. Evan is casually dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved, button-down shirt. They calmly elaborate on each other’s points and occasionally finish each other’s sentences. Evan points out that their plans do not stray from their ancestors’ legacy, mission or values, which he describes as “leaving the company in a better state than it was before and planning for the next generation.”
Cinda leans forward and nods enthusiastically. “We’re supposed to buy more land than we sell, [and] innovate in our generation to make the company more diversified and stronger than it was in the past,” she says.
Tapping a pencil on the table, Evan adds, “The way our foresters manage timberland is a metaphor for what we do for the company. We’re stewards of this land for this generation, but we’re sustainably harvesting and cutting mature trees—cutting out deadwood to create something valuable in the future.”
Asked how that applies to the retail store, he explains, “We are innovating and adapting to the market—with more competition from Home Depot and Lowe’s, the poor economy, businesses going under all around—to be more cognizant of our profitability. For instance, we’ve adjusted our product mix to make up for what Home Depot is not focusing on, and added some new services for our customers to keep them coming.” That includes carrying more grades and choices in lumber, offering free delivery and providing a dumpster to make it easier for their contractor customers to get rid of demolition debris, since landfills have become scarcer and more expensive. Cowls sells the discarded sheet rock, windows and lumber to a facility that sorts and recycles the material, a neighborly nod to Amherst’s “green” sensibilities.
Cinda’s vocal “buy local” campaign, begun even before her two years as head of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, may explain the community’s loyalty to the independent building-supply store, which has enabled it to thrive despite the daunting competition.
Family history
Founder Jonathan Cowls and his wife, Hannah, acquired the Home Farm property in 1741; they were among the first five families to settle in Amherst, which then was part of Hadley. Their son, David, and his wife, Sarah, raised livestock. They also established tree farms and harvested logs and manufactured lumber for sale, using an early portable sawmill. Then five successive Jonathan Cowlses, each a firstborn son, took over the farm and its related businesses. Each put his own stamp on the evolving enterprise to keep up with changes in technology, demographics and economic climate.
By the late 1800s the namesake of the current company, Walter Dickinson Cowls (whose maternal grandfather was a distant cousin of Amherst poet Emily Dickinson), expanded the dairy farm and bought more forestland. The enterprise became the largest lumber dealer in Western Massachusetts and one of the state’s largest onion producers. W.D. also helped start Amherst’s trolley system, providing wood for the tracks and ties. In 1898, he expanded the farmhouse from a saltbox into a larger Colonial-style home with a covered porch, where folks could wait for the trolley during inclement weather. He also served as a state representative.
His only daughter (Cinda’s and Evan’s great-grandmother), Sarah Etta Cowls Jones, raised cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, screaming peacocks and Dalmatian dogs. Her husband, Gerald Jones, helped his father-in-law run the tree farming and lumber business. Their son, Walter Cowls Jones, continued farming and developed the lumberyard and planer mill, as well as the first electric sawmill in the state, if not the country. He also co-owned a lumber retail store near downtown Amherst, where Cowls lumber was sold.
One of Walter’s three children, Paul C. Jones, was Cinda and Evan’s father. He expanded the planer mill and diversified to provide finishing sawmill products for retail sales. In 1980 Paul—who died on Nov. 24, 2011, at age 69—launched Cowls Building Supply on the Home Farm property. Paul’s brother, Denison, now in his mid-70s, opened what is now called Jones Group Realtors in the late 1960s; it’s the largest independently owned real estate agency in Western Massachusetts. Paul’s sister, Gert Como, now in her mid-60s, followed her husband to Texas, but after he suddenly died at age 39, she returned in 1986 to run Cowls’ retail operation.
All three owned shares, but rather than let ownership dilute among inactive family members, Cinda and Evan are in the process of buying out the eighth generation’s stake in the company. The Cowls enterprise owns tree farms in 28 towns that total many thousands of acres. In addition, the business leases 50 acres of agricultural land to farmers. In fact, town lore has it that a squirrel could travel from the New Hampshire or Vermont border to the Connecticut border without leaving the Cowls family property, although the siblings’ mother, Ruth, calls that claim an exaggeration.
Carving a new niche
Both Cinda and Evan left Amherst after college, eager to escape the business where they worked each summer and the town that felt to them like a fishbowl. Cinda headed to Washington, D.C., and worked her way into managing divisions of various non-profit organizations in the natural resources field. Evan, who studied wood technology and management, gravitated to a lumberyard north of Boston, two hours east.
After ten years, in 2001 Cinda got “the call” from her father. “He told me, ‘With all your experience working in non-profits, why don’t you come home and work for our lumberyard, since it’s a non-profit?’” He was laughing when he said this, she recalls. She says she didn’t realize until she moved back to the homestead that he was serious—the lumberyard was indeed unprofitable.
Cinda credits Paul for recognizing that a woman in a male-dominated industry would have a hard time gaining the respect of customers and co-workers if her father was still in control. He stepped back from leadership almost immediately, she says.
“He sort of threw me into the deep end,” she recalls. “I appreciate that he gave me his trust, and that did instill instant reverence and respect of the team that I might not have had if he were the boss. But I would have liked to have more years working side-by-side with him.” Until his death, Paul came to the office to read the news and discuss potential business opportunities with Cinda, her brother and sometimes her Aunt Gert.
In 2002, the year after Cinda joined the business, the sawmill—which had been part of the family business for three generations but had not made money for a long time—was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Cinda says her initial reaction to the devastation was, “Thank you God, we understand your message! That sawmill never made money.”
Paul, Evan and the company’s head forester had a different view of the situation; they advocated rebuilding. “They felt they had just lost their history in the business,” says Cinda. “They felt it was the right thing, morally and heritage-wise and for people working in the sawmill, to rebuild it. That’s admirable, but I’m more pragmatic than that. The sawmill was a loss leader. That was OK when the economy was still good.” But at the time of the fire in 2002, the country was mired in the downturn that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and rebuilding didn’t seem like a good idea to Cinda.
Ultimately, Paul Jones overruled his daughter. “I’d only been back a year,” Cinda notes. “Even though Dad had instantly backed away, he came in and said, ‘I’m still in charge, and you will rebuild.’ ” Doing so involved taking on “big debt,” Cinda says.
The family agreed to reassess the situation five years after the sawmill’s reopening in 2004. In the interim, Cinda became president of W.D. Cowls in 2007.
When the economy tanked in 2008, the family reluctantly agreed with Cinda to cut its losses. “We tried all different ways to improve the business, and nothing worked,” she says. “Still, they hated closing the sawmill.” In 2010 she convinced them to do just that. “It was a good business education, learning how to get buy-in for a business decision,” says Cinda.
The sawmill equipment was sold to an Oklahoma sawmill operator, who planned to use it to harvest exotic timber in Nicaragua, where Hurricane Felix decimated forests four years ago. Eight sawmill workers were laid off, but three were hired by the retail store, and the former mill supervisor remains as the chief forester for Cowls’ land company.
Cinda has remained unafraid to fight other battles to keep the family company afloat. Her Washington experience came in handy during a fight with U.S. Rep. John Olver (D-Mass.), who in 2001 tried to designate some of Cowls’ property as protected federal scenic land. “We’ve let trails go through our land, and all the sudden he wanted to turn it into a scenic trail that would cost so much more money than a local trail,” says Cinda. “Having worked for those foundations, I know the precedents…. It would be a serious land-use restriction. That experience in D.C. saved a lot of the asset value of this company.”
The designation could have restricted her company’s logging activities on the portion of the trail that runs through Cowls’ property. Moreover, only hikers would be allowed on the trail. To rally against the effort, Cinda formed the Taxpayers Recreation Alliance, a group that encompassed landowners abutting the trail as well as snowmobilers, mountain bikers, horseback riders and four-wheel-drivers, all of whom would be prohibited from using it. Ultimately, no one won that battle completely. Congress approved the federal designation in 2009 but agreed to reroute the scenic trail away from private property owners such as Cowls. However, that has yet to happen, so with a giant hole in the official scenic route, her family’s land continues to be a de facto part of the trail.
Long-term thinking
During Evan’s two years in the mid-1990s outside the family business, he would drive home regularly to visit his girlfriend, but he had no intention of coming back to the family business. But by 1995, the retail store was growing rapidly. “My aunt called me one day and said, ‘We need to hire someone, and we’ll go ahead unless you have any desire to come back and help run it.’ I realized what a cool place Amherst is, and decided to come back.” He worked his way up through the company, starting behind the counter serving contractor clients. After two or three years, he began running the store with his Aunt Gert, who plans to retire in the next couple of years.
Like his sister and their long line of ancestors, Evan has not been afraid to initiate changes. To help compete against the big-box stores, he built kitchen design and window showrooms about five years ago.
Evan also managed the reconstruction of the sawmill building, a two-year process. The family was savvy enough to realize the new sawmill might not last, so they designed it with features that would allow the building to be repurposed, such as 18-foot-wide doors that can adjust for different purposes, floor levels that would work for different businesses, and a trench inside that can be used to run wires for electrical service. “I don’t think we were planning to shut it down, but we always think long term and know nothing is forever. It was just good planning,” says Evan.
It will take a combination of Evan’s planning skills and Cinda’s tenacity to take W.D. Cowls further into the 21st century. One day, they hope, the view from Cinda’s office window will include a bustling North Amherst Village Center, featuring public green spaces and a mix of farmhouse-style residential and commercial buildings—a realization of her vision.
“I can’t wait to see what’s coming next,” she says.
Jayne A. Pearl, a member of Family Business Magazine’s founding staff, is now a freelance writer, editor and speaker. She is co-author, with Richard A. Morris, of Kids, Wealth and Consequences: Ensuring a Responsible Financial Future for the Next Generation (Bloomberg, a Wiley imprint, 2010; www.kidswealthandconsequences.com).
Copyright 2011 by Family Business Magazine. This article may not be posted online or reproduced in any form, including photocopy, without permssion from the publisher. For reprint information, contact bwenger@familybusinessmagazine.com.