Tony Brookhouse

Chief Operating Officer and Co-Owner Koopman Lumber

Last Reviewed: September 28, 2026

Executive Summary

Tony Brookhouse is Chief Operating Officer of Koopman Lumber and one of its three third-generation owners. The family-owned lumber, building materials and hardware dealer is based in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, and has served builders and homeowners since 1939. He runs the business with his wife, Denise Brookhouse, and her brother, Dirk Koopman. Under their ownership the company has grown well beyond the Blackstone Valley, adding stores in eastern and western Massachusetts and on Cape Cod through acquisitions and new builds. In 2025 it crossed into Connecticut.

Career Highlights

• Chief Operating Officer and co-owner of Koopman Lumber, named alongside Denise Brookhouse and Dirk Koopman as one of the company’s three third-generation owners.
• Part of the leadership trio the Worcester Business Journal named Family Business Leaders of the Year in 2025; the paper credited the three with doubling the firm’s size over five years.
• Co-owner during a run of acquisitions that included Sampson Lumber in Pembroke in 2024 and Lyon & Billard, a Connecticut dealer with four locations, in 2025.
• Co-owner when Koopman Lumber was named LBM Journal’s Dealer of the Year in January 2023.

Professional Journey

Koopman Lumber began in 1939. Peter Koopman, then working as a builder in Whitinsville, started selling surplus materials from his garage while his wife Hendrika sold hardware from the family basement. His son Don Koopman later led the company, and today it is run by the third generation: Dirk Koopman, his sister Denise Brookhouse, and her husband Tony Brookhouse. According to the Worcester Business Journal and Koopman’s own press materials, Tony Brookhouse is Chief Operating Officer.

The company’s recent growth has been fast by the standards of a family lumber dealer. It built a distribution centre in Uxbridge in 2011, opened in Sharon in 2013, and then began a series of acquisitions: Lampson Lumber in Hudson (2015), Doyle Lumber in Andover (2018), Fairhaven Lumber (2021), A. Boilard & Sons in Springfield’s Indian Orchard neighbourhood (2022) and Sampson Lumber in Pembroke (2024). In 2023 it opened a location in Dennis on Cape Cod. In 2025 it bought Lyon & Billard, which the company describes as a Connecticut building materials supplier with more than 180 years of history. That was Koopman’s first acquisition outside Massachusetts and its first to bring several locations at once.

Speaking to the Worcester Business Journal in 2025, Brookhouse explained how the company withstands price swings in lumber. It buys through the largest lumber cooperative in the country, keeps a strong balance sheet, and stores inventory on an 11-acre distribution yard. He also pointed to smaller operational habits as reasons customers stay, such as usually clearing excess lumber from job sites within 72 hours. The paper reported roughly 480 employees at the time. It said the three owners are supported by a non-family board of advisors.

Outside the business, the president of the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce told the paper that he co-chaired the capital campaign for Whitinsville Christian School’s $18.5 million athletic centre in 2017.

Education

No education record was found in the sources reviewed.