When Jim and Jeanne Brooks took over a local millworks business in their hometown of Libby, Montana, in 2005, they operated out of a 12×16 office equipped with two phone lines and a fax machine.
Within four years, their company, Big Sky Lumber Supply, was growing so fast that they decided to build a showroom and a new office, and in 2014 they started to migrate from paper to a computer system using the DSL-based copper network available in Libby.
But as more vendors moved their business operations online, the Brooks family and their growing office staff found that they weren’t fully able to keep up with supply chain demands. “A lot of vendors are in more metropolis places where fiber was,” Jeanne Brooks says. “I was always trying to keep up to their speeds, but sometimes we were just bogged down. My sales staff would come to me saying that web pages weren’t loading fast enough. We found ourselves struggling.”
Libby, located along the Kootenai River and beloved by the Brooks family for its wealth of outdoor activities, is in Lincoln County, which ranks 10th in Montana for the lowest percentage of 100 Mbps coverage. Montana ranks 50 out of 50 states in percentage of the population with access to 1GB internet.
Communication is critical to running any business, and no less so for Big Sky Lumber Supply. “We have probably 70-plus vendors all over the country,” Brooks says. “Building materials are vital to everyday life when you’re living as a do-it-yourself homeowner or a contractor who depends on lumber yards. They rely on small towns to grow their businesses. Communication is the key. It’s what holds it all together so that we can provide that service to our community.”
Brooks adds that many of their employees and customers are local, which adds to the importance of serving them well. “We feel strongly about supporting the community that supports us,” she says. “We help each other out on all levels, from community benefits to helping somebody in need all the way up to people moving here and building their dream home. All walks of life walk into our store, and it’s all based on the communication we have.”
The arrival of fiber internet to the scenic town of barely 3,000 has been game-changing for Big Sky Lumber Supply.
“It all changed when John appeared that day,” says Brooks, referring to Ziply Fiber mid-market account executive John Freeman. She realized, “We can fix this. We can provide faster speeds.”
Brooks was already updating the company’s hardware and changing the merchant services for point-of-sale systems when Freeman knocked on her door. “Everything had to go in sequence,” she explains. “That’s where John was great and Ziply was great. They understood that. They gave me the roadmap: this is what we have to do, in this order, so that you can make decisions on your end about why you’re going toward fiber.”
Freeman was happy to guide the family business through the process and even happier to see their excitement at the upgrades. “They always refer to me as their Ziply guy,” he says. “The last conversation I had with Jeanne was about how happy they were with Ziply and the local team.”
Freeman suggested Ziply Fiber’s Hosted Voice service for their phone system, which the company initially declined but then opted for once they saw the impact of the fiber-based improvements. The new system has come with a learning curve, but every time they run into an issue, Ziply Fiber is ready to help.
“I can’t stress how much we appreciate John being there when we have questions,” Brooks says. “John has been excellent. He stops by occasionally and makes sure we’re taken care of. He’s always there to point us in the right direction. The people he puts us in contact with have been great. They really care.”
Getting fiber to Libby means that people like Jim and Jeanne Brooks can run a thriving business in the town they have called home for their entire lives. They will have even more time for the things they love in Libby, because next year they are handing Big Sky Lumber Supply down to their son and daughter-in-law, David and Victoria. David has been working with Ziply Fiber to fine-tune the phone system and get ready to take over operations.
“We feel fortunate to have grown up in the place we love,” says Jeanne Brooks. “We are working together as a family to ensure that our business can grow and stay with the times and be here for the future of the community.”
