Where’s the missing link? In recent months some beautifully produced colour publications have crossed our desks, illustrating some wonderfully designed and executed woodwork in building exteriors, interiors, fixtures and fittings. Credits are given for architects, designers and contractors, but you search in vain for a credit for the timber suppliers.
Did these wonderful woods materialise out of nowhere? Of course not! Timber importers and merchants scoured the world, shipped, stored, dried, machined and nurtured their expensive stocks. So how come they are not given credit?
It is the same story at your local DIY store. Nice racks of hardwoods and softwoods without a single mark to identify what it is, who supplied it or even where it came from. Usually the sole marking is an FSC label and a bar code sticker for the checkout. All credit to Richard Burbidge for its point of sale timber product supplier identity – otherwise the customer is given no clue to who is offering what.
In this day and age of product ID where the label on every tin of beans lists the contents, instructions how to use, nutritional information and how to store the tin, it would be hard to imagine manufacturers and suppliers ignoring any opportunity to market their name and brand image, yet the timber industry is virtually invisible even before the product gets to the final consumer.
A good marketing practitioner would question why the timber industry appears so reluctant to disclose corporate identity, and allows its products to be sold on unmarked and anonymous. Possible links could be a small ID added on the end of the bar code sticker, or an impressed or inked marking along on the back of machined products, or even a small sticker on each piece with name and origin. The timber trade ought not to be too shy to advertise, but be proud to be suppliers of a truly renewable product. Every piece of timber is a potential billboard – the space is free!
And don’t forget to insist on a credit on those prestigious project photographs.
