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When you’re in the building supply industry, it takes more than a few truckloads to relocate your business.

Employees of Stetson Building Products Inc. got an intense three-day workout recently, loading and unloading about 50 semi-trailer loads of inventory as the Des Moines-based company moved its warehouse and headquarters to a new location south of downtown.

Fortunately, the nearly 58,000-square-foot warehouse/office location at 2205 Bell Ave. is all on one level, unlike the three-story building on Southwest Ninth Street that the company had occupied since 1963.

“We decided the 45-year experimentation with a three-level distribution center had probably run its course,” quipped Kevin Stetson, the company’s vice president of sales. “Having everything on one level will definitely increase efficiency. Our warehouse people have already commented on how much faster they can get everything unloaded and put away.”

In 2003, company founder Roger Stetson sold the business to three partners: his son, Kevin; Marte Cook, the company’s president; and John Willmore, executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Since then, the three have taken advantage of record revenues and profits to rebuild the company’s net worth. The efforts have paid off, as the partners expect to maintain some degree of profitability despite the downturn they’re now seeing in commercial construction.

Total U.S. construction spending on an annual basis is expected to decrease by 12 percent this year and 4 percent in 2010 before rebounding to double-digit growth in 2011 and 2012, according to a third-quarter estimate by IHS Global Insight’s Construction Service. Total commercial construction spending is expected to decrease by 28 percent this year.

With year-to-date sales down about 20 percent from last year’s record performance, Stetson Building Products’ goal is “to keep ourselves in a competitive situation without reducing any customer service,” Cook said. “And at the same time, adding more lines, more products. It seems like contractors are into diversification; a lot of them are doing different things, and we’re going to go right with them.”

The economic slowdown forced the company to lay off 10 employees about three months ago; it currently employs about 130 people at its nine locations in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Wisconsin, including 41 employees in Des Moines.

Though sales will likely be down 25 percent this year compared with 2008 and remain flat in 2010, “we will more than be able to withstand the economic storm,” Willmore said, noting that the company has built up its balance sheet significantly during the past five years.

Stetson Building Products anticipated a move for several years as plans progressed for the Riverpoint West area. Hubbell Realty Co. purchased the Ninth Street warehouse from Roger Stetson about six years ago, and within the next few weeks will begin demolishing it to make way for a future office park development.

Naturally, as many Stetson-supplied products as possible were used in the renovation of the company’s new location, which included completely gutting the office spaces and putting a new roof and exterior finishes on the building. As part of the refurbishment, the company added a product showroom onto the front of the warehouse.

The company, which recorded revenues of nearly $55 million last year, has supplied products to many of Greater Des Moines’ largest construction projects, among them the new headquarters buildings for Aviva USA and Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

“We do the big projects, but our day-to-day business is working with subcontractors doing small remodels and medium-type retail jobs,” Cook said. “Just having the correct type of materials for the professional contractor.”

Because of the slowdown in construction, contractors who once might have focused on one or two types of skilled trades are now broadening their offerings to increase their business, Cook noted. “One example is that we’re seeing contractors doing a lot more geothermal (systems). We’ve had enough people inquire about that, now we do service that market.”

Likewise, vendors are looking to stretch the uses of the same types of products to appeal to different markets and contractors, Stetson said. For instance, rather than using gravel for fill behind retaining walls, some contractors are now using expanded polystyrene, which has traditionally been used as insulation for synthetic stucco, for that purpose.

Some of the newer areas that Stetson is reaching into include high-performance floor coatings and highly polished concrete floors. Because of the recession, much of the company’s focus will be on repair and remodeling projects for the next couple of years.

Truly revolutionary products are few and far between in the construction industry, Stetson said. “There aren’t a whole lot of products out there that all of a sudden are going to add $20 million to your sales. There a lot more smaller, incremental things, and that’s what we’re looking for. As I like to say, they solve problems that some of our customers don’t even know they have yet. It’s always nice to be able to bring a product to a customer saying, ‘Here, how about this? Try this adhesive, this would be much faster, more efficient.'”

Roger Stetson launched the company in 1955, just two weeks after graduating from Drake University. The first product he distributed was a paper form that had just been introduced for use in pouring concrete columns. The company now sells approximately 1,500 different products.

The company opened a warehouse in Madison, Wis., in 2005, and in 2006 established a 48,000-square central distribution warehouse in Maquoketa, where it also has a rebar fabrication plant.

Expansion is always a possibility, but not into much larger cities than it operates in now, Stetson said.

“I like where we’re at right now,” he said. “We’re good at the smaller towns. I don’t see us trying to break into a Kansas City, Chicago or Milwaukee. We’re much better at the Rockfords of the world rather than bigger cities. Omaha is our biggest metropolitan area, and that’s a competitive-enough area.”