EcoTimber branches out:

Green movement fuels growth

Growth of the green movement at retail is prompting hardwood and bamboo manufacturer and distributor EcoTimber to expand its network of authorized dealers throughout the U.S. and Canada – more than quadrupling its size – and doing it by offering the most environmentally-friendly products available.

Billing itself as "the only pure player" in the flooring industry exclusively devoted to green values, EcoTimber claims to be "the first company in the world dedicated to selling wood products only from environmental sources." Founded in 1992, the San Rafael, Calif.-based company has grown from 80 dealers to more than 200 in the last year, and plans to double that number by next fall. Since June, the company has added 60 new dealers and 74 display placements. A five-to-eight-year plan calls for some 500 accounts with total residential and commercial sales of $40 million to $50 million.

"We can do this because we’re small," said Michael Siskin, EcoTimber’s national sales manager. "The big guys don’t have the ability to act quickly on changes in the economy and industry so niche players like us develop through the cracks." Siskin, who joined EcoTimber in April after 26 years with Mohawk, was brought on board to capture the mainstream floor covering dealer. Since April, he has hired four new regional managers and plans to add another four or five every six months for the foreseeable future.

EcoTimber’s niche market is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified product and it handles its own distribution, selling directly to dealers. EcoTimber is not only attracting more dealers, it’s attracting larger ones – like Robert Hill, founder and president of Chicago-based Floor Covering Associates (FCA), comprised of nine stores in the Midwest, a national buying group (the FCA Network) and a design center.

FCA recently started reviewing its entire product line for "green potential," Hill said, when the need for more product became clear. "Here’s a company with a unique approach that claims to be able to monitor all of its products from the source through FSC. That’s fascinating," he said. It’s also attractive to builders and architects – a major source of FCA’s sales – looking for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) points, Hill pointed out.

"We don’t just have a green product line. We’re a green company," said Lewis Buchner, CEO, EcoTimber. "Our commitment to green issues goes all the way to the core of the company and our customers get that." Private-equity investors got the message too. In April, New West Capital Partners and Greenmont Capital Partners, both of Colorado, backed Buchner and several other internal partners in a buyout from Hayward Lumber in Northern California. Holbrook & Co., a San Francisco Bay-area investment banking firm specializing in emerging companies in the sustainable business sector, advised on the equity financing. The move put EcoTimber in a position to launch the company nationally.

"Green building conversations have been going on for about three months in the floor covering industry but we’ve been having them since 1992 so we have significantly more experience in sourcing environmental products before they became popular," Siskin said. The drawback is that FSC is often in short supply because it is limited in quantity and somewhat difficult to come by.

"Hopefully, the demand will cause a change in forestry and there will be much more wood that gets FSC approval," Siskin said. "If you carry tropical species that are sourced through FSC, you’re casting a vote for sustainable forestry. If more people cast a vote for sustainable forestry, then there’s more pressure on people who own forests to say we’re better off going FSC."

EcoTimber’s expansion was helped in part because of green-washing and people don’t know who they can trust, according to Buchner. "When they find out about EcoTimber, they discover that we have very high standards," he said. Those standards, for example, exclude even some FSC products from the mix, such as engineered flooring with a tropical wearlayer – permitted by FSC under a mixed-content category of certification. "Most consumers don’t know the difference," Buchner said. "If it has the FSC label they think its fine, but we still won’t sell it because we know that 80 percent of those wearlayers are coming from illegally-logged sources. We’re not going to be part of that. It’s very tempting because we could use more volume in Brazilian cherry, for example, but we just won’t do it."

Something unique that EcoTimber does do is devote retail training sessions to environmental forestry issues and wood sourcing. The sales team at Capitol Floors and Decorating in Glen Allen, Va., recently went through the training. "It was different from anything they’d been exposed to before," said Marc Vest, Capitol president. "It was all about the environment. This is a very responsible hardwood and that’s the way we’re selling it." The challenge, however, is the premium price tag. "EcoTimber’s cost to make its product is no different from anyone else’s but in order to continue to cut its wood responsibly it has to make that cost up on the margins," Vest added. "Our salespeople are struggling some with that, but as time goes on these conversations with the consumer are going to become more enlightened."

By skipping the distributor, EcoTimber acts as a direct source for educating its dealers about wood sourcing and point of sale. "The point of the training session is to educate the dealers on environmental issues in the flooring and wood industry in general," said Brad van Unen, EcoTimber’s director of marketing. "We want them to feel comfortable and confident so that when environmentally-conscious customers start asking deeper questions, they get detailed information. That’s central to our mission because a lot of other companies are getting into certified products but they’re not FSC and don’t have the stringent criteria of the FSC."

When Northeast regional sales manager David Gerrity conducts a training session, he tells dealers that 50 percent to 90 percent of wood – depending on the part of the world in which it is sourced – is harvested illegally. "Retailers think whatever certification schemes are out there are similar," Gerrity said. "What we’re doing is showing them the differentiations in sourcing, like FSC. It gets their attention."

Look for Free Offer Discount and Financing icons when searching for your local dealers