Bold moves to boost market

Dare to be different. That, said consultant Peter Travis in the last issue of TTJ, is the secret to successful marketing. One operation which clearly takes that message to heart is the American Hardwood Export Council.

A key target of the US timber marketing and market development body is the design community - the construction and manufacturing material specifiers. So it has learned their language. Take its recent Out of the Woods project. This collaboration with London's Royal College of Art (RCA) challenged students to design 12 chairs in US hardwoods. A lavishly-designed book was printed on the project and, really tuning into the creatives' frequency, the RCA got writers to pen poems and short stories about each chair. One of the latter was also nominated for a Design Museum Design of the Year Award.

In another recent showcase, this time for heat-treated US tulipwood, AHEC worked with an architect and fabricator to come up the backdrop for the Office of the Future exhibition put on by rarefied design magazine Wallpaper.

These latest ventures form part of a rich heritage of high-profile AHEC initiatives designed to whet the appetites of designers and architects. There was the Sclera tulipwood pavilion at the 2008 London Design Festival (LDF), a collaboration with top-flight architect David Adjaye. This was followed by the headline-grabbing Timber Wave at the 2011 LDF, a huge laminated red oak arch on which AHEC partnered with equally renowned architect Amanda Levete and engineers Arup.

The relationship with the LDF continued last year. Besides a display of the Out of the Woods chairs made by Benchmark Furniture, the event featured an exhibition of benches, including one in AHEC-supplied heat-treated hardwoods from designer Martino Gamper. So far, you might think, so aesthetic. But, vital though it is, AHEC's innovative approach involves more than getting designers' creative juices flowing. Its projects have also always said something about US hardwoods' wider performance possibilities. In fact, recently it pledged to take this to a new level. Not only does its work with the design sector have to include a technical story, it has to open a new chapter. Hence Sclera used treated tulipwood to take this interior species outside, and the Timber Wave taught new lessons about hardwood's structural potential. There was also technical innovation in the Wallpaper structure and Gamper bench. Both grew out of AHEC's heat treatment research to open up new exterior uses for hardwood joinery .

There was more to Out of the Woods than met the eye too. It centred on AHEC's life cycle analysis (LCA) work with US hardwoods. LCA, it believes, will become central to materials specification and potentially gives timber an invaluable competitive edge. Hence each Out of the Woods chair had a full LCA profile. AHEC has also always been keen to share the fruits of its unique art and technology approach to timber market development with the rest of the industry and, significantly, it is now deepening this co-operation by sponsoring the Wood for Good campaign.

This looks set to be a key strategic alliance, involving not only sizeable funding, but information sharing. In fact, AHEC is already offering its data to Wood for Good's Wood First Plus online information resource on timber's LCA and wider environmental impacts.

Meanwhile the US organisation is now planning to take its daring to be different to new heights - literally. It says its 2012 LDF project, featuring engineered hardwood, will be its biggest, boldest and most impactful yet.