Eastern Engineered Wood Products was established in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1998; it was one of the first distribution companies that specialized exclusively in engineered wood products. This specialization was a bold step that allowed us to focus on the specific needs of our customers with one of their more complicated and logistically challenging product lines.
Learning that our customers expected more than they were getting from our competitors, we focused keenly on their feedback and were fortunate to have some early successes and extraordinary growth. This growth compelled us to search out a larger property with rail service on which to consolidate our three Lehigh Valley locations.
In 2006, we purchased a 45 acre parcel on the former site of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and began construction on a brand-new 66,000 square foot facility sitting on 35 paved acres of yard space – the largest distribution center of its kind! The new facility, which we moved into in June of the following year, gave us an impressive foundation on which to build our future.
2007 marked the beginning of a US economic recession and subsequent collapse of the housing market. Companies at all levels of the supply channel struggled to survive in the following years and many failed. These were tough years but we entrenched and focused even more keenly on becoming a better service organization. In 2008, we invested in and launched a new quality initiative that challenged us to raise the bar on all of our customer service measurements.
2012 marked the beginning of another period of growth and we undertook several exciting new initiatives over the next three years, including establishing our new private label branded StructurePRO LVL® and expanding the brand into Treated Glulam and SPI-90 series LVL flanged I-Joists.
In 2015 we were named Business of the Year in the 36-100 Employee Category, a prestigious award presented by Lehigh Valley Business.
Over the next couple of years we continued to add new products and expand geographically with the intent of establishing new distribution locations. In preparation for this, we hired two new Outside Sales Representatives to service the southern reaches of our territory.
Late in 2018 we established our second distribution center on a 15-acre rail-served parcel in Emporia, VA, expanding our distribution reach from Western Connecticut to North Carolina. As our high-service model took root in our new service area we grew quickly and met many new customers.
The successful startup of this location led to a search for a permanent home for our Virginia distribution center. In May of 2021 we broke ground on a larger 22 acre site in Keysville, VA where we relocated our Emporia distribution center and opened for business in just over six months.
In early 2023 we opened our third distribution center in the Anderson, SC area, which services customers in the Carolinas, North Georgia, and Eastern Tennessee.