Inside Outdoor Specialties’ $3 Million Annual Decking Sales | F&D Mastery Podcast #27

Outdoor Specialties runs a supplier-only model and deliberately never installs, so it never competes with the contractors it serves and lets them use its showroom as their own to close homeowners.

The company sells over $3 million in composite decking a year with just five employees, having intentionally shrunk from roughly 50 people after the 2008 downturn to build real relationships instead of treating customers like numbers.

Rudy sells no wood decking at all, only composite: he explains that AZEK is 100% PVC and runs about 10 degrees cooler in full sun, while Trex and TimberTech are 50% wood and 50% plastic composites with more woodlike color and texture.

Since the government removed CCA (chrome, cyanide, arsenic) from residential pressure-treated lumber, today's treated wood weathers and rots far faster, and decks only eight years old are collapsing when water gets trapped on the joists.

Always install joist tape between the deck board and the joist so trapped water can't rot the frame, and it matters most on re-decks where old screw holes let water soak into the framing.

Frequency beats a single big-spend ad: radio and word of mouth drive the most business, but you can't judge results after running an ad once or for a single month, and being listed on manufacturer websites as an authorized dealer is a major lead source.

Advertise across multiple channels and hire professionals to do it rather than trying to do it yourself, because no single avenue delivers success on its own and consistency is what pays off.