Antigo’s Sawmill Surplus relocating to newer, bigger building

Rich Palzewic

Staff

November 10, 2025

ANTIGO – To better serve its customers and gain more space, Owner Jason Swartz said Sawmill Surplus in Antigo is relocating from 119 Superior St. to 2906 Highway 45.

Swartz said he expects the move to be completed sometime in January.

“Right now, in our current location, we have about an 8,500 square-foot, cold-storage warehouse,” he said. “In our new facility, we’ll have 26,000 square feet. It’s so big that you might not even be able to find a guy in there from time to time.”

Swartz said he’s most excited about the improvements customers will notice in the new location.

“Right now, if a customer walks into our warehouse, they see bundles of lumber and have to walk around our warehouse and use their imagination to create their project at their house,” he said. “If you come to our new store and walk into that new heated showroom, you’ll see all those products displayed on big samples and pick what works best for you.”

Swartz said the new drive-thru lane is another feature he’s eager for, which will offer customers a more convenient way to pick up their purchases.

“I’ll laugh and tell everybody, ‘It’s not about the customer – it’s about me being sick of loading lumber outside in January,’” he laughed.

Swartz said the new building is on the north side of Antigo – “the side of town where the moving and shaking takes place.”

“I think the general foot traffic and retail side of the business are going to go way up,” he said. “Currently, we have six employees, but I think it’s going to take more people to handle the new location – maybe we’ll need 10 eventually.”

Specializing in wall and ceiling coverings, tongue and groove paneling and shiplap, Swartz said Sawmill Surplus is a “niche lumberyard.”

“We work with several different wood species and have different shapes, sizes and colors – that’s really the bread and butter of our business,” he said.

Swartz said the new location will allow Sawmill Surplus to expand its offerings – including timber frame parts for pavilions, as well as composite decking and siding – giving customers a wider selection of products.

“At the end of the day, the goal for us is to sell a product at a price point that nobody else can touch,” he said. “We do that by buying directly from the manufacturers. Some of our products do come through distribution, but for the most part, we’re very price competitive because we eliminate that distribution chain.”

To clarify, Swartz said Sawmill Surplus does not produce any of the products it sells, but sources them directly from distributors to sell to customers.

“Even though I paid a pretty penny for the new building, we’re still going to be just as competitive with our prices as we always have been,” he said. “I can’t and won’t change who we are, where we came from and how we built the company. We’re going to remain exactly who we are. We’re just finally going to have a facility big enough to show off and store our products correctly.”

Still work to be done

Though the 26,000-square-foot building still requires some work before it’s fully operational, Swartz said about two-thirds of the exterior has already been painted.

“It’s not just about painting,” he said. “There was some brush growing in some areas, and recently, we hauled out a massive load of old pallets that were stacked up against the building. I’d love to be painting right now, but Mother Nature says no, so the rest of the painting has to wait until spring.”

Swartz said additional work on the building includes concrete installation and preparing the south warehouse for a drive-thru lane.

“The former owner of the building – it was a furniture store – technically has until Jan. 4 to be 100% out,” he said. “As they sell their items, they’ll vacate the south warehouse and move to the north warehouse. The south warehouse is where I need to pull down the suspended ceiling and pull up carpet to get ready for that drive-thru lane. It was very much a display setting in these buildings for furniture, so there is some work to be done yet.”

If everything proceeds as planned, Swartz said he expects the new location to open for customer pickups of lumber sometime in January.

“By late December, we will be in that south warehouse for sure,” he said. “The north warehouse is becoming the showroom, which I don’t have a lot to do in there on day one. The former owners just need to move out, and we’ll move in and be selling.”

Going the extra mile

Swartz said what sets Sawmill Surplus apart from big-box stores isn’t just the prices – it’s the customer service.

“If we don’t have the exact thing you walked in the door for, we’re immediately going to take you for a walk and suggest alternatives or let you know when what you want is going to be here,” he said. “Also, we deliver [to] literally the entire State of Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, eastern Minnesota and Northeast Iowa – that’s a regular thing for us.”

Swartz said Sawmill Surplus keeps delivery fees “very reasonable” – charging just enough to cover fuel and the driver’s time, “and that’s it.”

“It’s not uncommon for us to be in Three Lakes, Eagle River, Minocqua, St. Germain and Park Falls on a Tuesday,” he said.

New frontiers

In an effort to expand its reach, Swartz said Sawmill Surplus has begun taking on government projects within the past year.

“In my previous life, I was the sales manager for the Menominee Indian [Reservation] Sawmill,” he said. “[There], I got my feet wet dealing with state and federal entities and formed some relationships there.”

To help pave the way for government work, Swartz said Sawmill Surplus obtained HUBZone status – a Small Business Administration program for small businesses in Historically Underutilized Business Zones.

“With Antigo and Langlade County being smaller areas with not a lot of industry,” he said, “we qualified.”

Being HUBZone certified, Swartz said, gives Sawmill Surplus a small competitive edge in the federal bidding arena.

“I would estimate we’ve completed about a half a dozen contracts, selling to the state and federal government,” he said. “We’re bidding things like walkways in national parks and supplying the material to make the boardwalk, bridge or the staircase. We’ve had some success selling timbers to shipbuilding companies who are building for the federal government as well – we’re getting our feet wet.”

Progress over time

Swartz said the foundation for the company began roughly 20 years ago, when he started building furniture by hand in his garage.
“As time went on, I attended North Central Technical College [NTC] in Antigo in their wood science program,” he said. “Ultimately, I became an instructor in that program and taught CNC machining to the wood products industry. I was able to connect with wood manufacturing industries in the Great Lakes because of my time at NTC.”

Speaking from experience, Swartz said NTC runs “extremely unique wood industry programs” – attracting students from around the globe.

“It wouldn’t be weird to meet a student there from British Columbia, Canada,” he said.

Swartz said Sawmill Surplus started as a natural progression from building and machining things in his garage, with COVID-19 ultimately serving as a major turning point.

“Before COVID, I pretty much worked 50 hours a week, but post-COVID, it was five hours a week,” he said. “That’s when I began working at the sawmill in Neopit. I was their sales manager for about five years.”

A few years into that role, Swartz said he began developing Sawmill Surplus.

“That would have been spring 2022,” he said. “I left the sawmill in Neopit a little more than a year ago and went full tilt with Sawmill Surplus.”

For more information on Sawmill Surplus, visit its Facebook page or sawmillsurpluswi.com.