“Solidarity is what propels teamwork forward”

Fence Empire LLC is a leading fence material supplier to US wholesale distributors and construction goods stores. Jason Lau, CEO, oversees their Japanese cedar fencing business, which sells rails, posts, decking, S4S timber, and T&G boards. Besides wood, they sell decorative steel and aluminum fences.

Jason's southern Chinese family has run a sawmill for three generations. After creating basic furniture, the family's factory expanded. They started a forest plantation in the early 1980s to secure raw material availability. Jason joined a state-owned import and export company in China that specialized in lumber after graduating from university. His brother and father managed the family's factory and produced export goods.

Jason established his wood export enterprise in 2009. Large orders, particularly from Home Depot, pushed them to concentrate on fence pickets. They immediately became a leader in the fence industry. Later, Jason founded Fence Empire, a Japanese cedar company, in the US in 2017. The sawmill his father and brother ran in China produced Japanese cedar pickets. They struggled to introduce this wood species to the U.S. but succeeded in two years. Today, they sell fence pickets, rails, posts, lumber, and panels.

Fence Empire is proud of their family-owned Chinese mills, which supply a variety of grades and sizes of wood to the North American fence business. Their Japanese facilities painstakingly grind wood to ensure quality. The eight recognized trademarks of Fence Empire demonstrate their devotion to quality and innovation: ProRail, FeShield, FeDek, Ameritimber, AmeriRail, JapCedar, Americraft, and AmeriGuard. To maximize efficiency and cost-effectiveness for their partners, they send materials straight to the market. Jason’s brother's metal manufacturing investment allowed them to make ornamental iron and aluminum fences, broadening Fence Empire's product line and boosting its success.

The Fence Empire also values CEO-department manager relations. Managers oversee sales, product, service, and logistics. To create confidence and bring transparency, department managers are informed of expectations and goals and encouraged to comprehend the company's strategy and vision. They eventually respect department leaders, exhibit empathy, and resolve issues equitably. Jason knows department manager relationships are key to company success. The purpose is to solve problems, promote workplace wellness, and acknowledge departmental and company achievements. They communicate well in various ways by having regular one-on-one meetings to discuss goals and challenges while being transparent in their decision-making. According to them, actively listening to department managers' concerns and ideas, addressing conflicts impartially, and celebrating milestones and achievements create a positive work environment.

In addition, they want to double general sales, triple metal fence volume, and develop a recognizable brand. Strategic planning and overcoming barriers are needed to achieve these aims. Jason explains that to identify growth opportunities and target certain consumer segments to boost sales, they create a sales strategy, including goals and KPIs, for their sales team. Advertising boosts brand awareness and consumer acquisition. Their main goal is to improve customer engagement and service to keep them coming back, and therefore, they use promotions and discounts to boost sales and assess results to change plans. As metal fence volume triples, they enhance production procedures to boost output. When they enter new markets or regions using their sales network, they form partnerships with distributors or chain-building material stores to acquire huge orders and offer multiple fence designs and customization possibilities to attract more customers. They also implement quality control to ensure product quality despite increased volume.

The company promotes its values to build its brand through marketing and advertising that draws attention. They promote social media and the internet to reach more people. They show client reviews to develop trust and use surveys and feedback to improve brand impressions. Partnerships, sponsorships, and endorsements link their business to celebrities. Financial investments, market research, operational reforms, and good leadership may help them overcome challenges. Monitoring progress and modifying strategy to meet market and performance changes is key. Including the team and having clear expectations and roles helps the organization achieve these goals.

For company success, Jason prefers autocratic and transactional leadership. Pandemics halted global markets, and there are more obstacles to face in the next few months. They need a good strategy to motivate and build their staff and make quick market and business decisions. Since autocrats want teamwork and sole authority, tough market decisions necessitate rapid action, and transactional leaders manage teams through rewards and punishments. He believes he has the most market knowledge and can make excellent decisions. Corporate strategy requires competitive analysis, so direct and indirect competitors are identified. Leaders, challengers, and niche firms are identified by researching market shares and competitors' products and services. They assess features, quality, pricing, and USPs, and then review their competitors' customer bases to see if they target the same audience. Next, competitor pricing, value, and differentiation initiatives are examined.

They also evaluate competitors' market share using innovation, quality, cost leadership, etc.; train them on how to contact customers online, in-store, or both; and examine their marketing and branding messaging. They examine each competitor's SWOT, get customer feedback on their products and services, and evaluate their industrial legal compliance. As infractions could distinguish them, they monitor competitors' accounts to determine if they're stable or discomforting, then compare their firm's' responses to economic fluctuations and new technologies to propose improvements.

Competitive analysis informs strategy, product differentiation, and growth, says Jason. Continuous practice helps them adapt to industry and organizational changes. Jason tackles restructuring projects by enjoying open communication with the restructuring and project teams. The restructuring's goals, reasons, and progress are communicated clearly and frequently. They set goals, manage projects, and resolve challenges. As change is constant, management is done because restructuring changes roles or processes that involve staff support, problem-solving, and change acceptance. Project teams must follow restructuring and organizational goals. With this, risk and challenge assessment, mitigation, and contingency planning for restructuring or project issues are among his priorities.

Consequently, with these strategies, their sawmill's reputation as a family-owned lumber company has grown with their horizons. Fence Empire is the largest US Japanese cedar fence supplier and steel and aluminum fence manufacturer. Jason is proud of the Fence Empire team, his family, and their diligent workers.