Taggart Quality Hardwood
Promoting Homegrown hardwood and homegrown financing Tom and Ted Taggart didn't start off to be in the flooring and finished wood products business. The Bass River brothers thought they were going to make their fortune taking a portable saw mill around the province cutting wood for other people. But business was slower than anticipated, so during the slack times the duo cut hardwood for themselves and sold it to a Tatamagouche business that milled it into panels for kitchen cabinets.
Then Ted took an entrepreneurship program co-sponsored by the Nova Scotia Co-operative Council. Spurred on by the presenters and the research the program provided, the brothers decided they should be doing the value added work themselves.
They set up a small shop and kiln drying facilities in an old munitions bunker at the former CFS Debert base and began making their own kitchen cabinet components, which they shipped through a broker to Belgium, Italy and Lithuania. The shop was small, and they soon decided for what they were paying in rent, they could build their own shop. Ted, a member of the audit committee for the Cumberland and Colchester Credit Union, approach the branch manager and quickly secured a $200,000 guaranteed loan that allowed then to build a 5,000 square foot building, complete a show room and production facilities. “People who come into the showroom can hear the saws going in the back. They can smell the wood. They like that,” says Ted.
Tom says the business might have been able to go to one of the national banks to finance the new building, but brothers like the idea of supporting the local community.
“We trumpet the quality of our local hardwood, so it's appropriate we use a community financial institution.” With currency fluctuations and a global drop in housing construction, export demand has tailed off over the last 18-months, but the brothers are undeterred. Their staff of six has switched focus to flooring, and the business has landed contracts with some of the major builders involved in new home construction in the Halifax area. It has also opened a small showroom in Truro to be more accessible to homeowners interested in their hardwood products for remodeling. |
