Red oak is front and centre of the American Hardwood Export Council’s (AHEC) European 2019 marketing strategy.
Already under way, its new high-profile campaign for America’s most abundant species is targeting current and future decision and market makers, design students, architects, interior designers and other key influencers and cultural leaders.
The increased focus on Europe, AHEC European director David Venables acknowledges, is in part a response to the sharp downturn in sales to the American hardwood sector’s leading export market, China. That’s the consequence of the US-China trade dispute and the latter’s imposition of a 10% tariff on hardwood imports, plus a wider slowdown in the Chinese economy.
“But there’s more to this than the US industry looking to other export opportunities as a short-term expedient until temporary issues in their main market are resolved,” said Mr Venables. “Developments in China have brought into sharp relief the need to diversify its export strategy and cultivate wider spread of markets for the longer term,” he said, in a view echoed by AHEC executive director Mike Snow in his TTJ guest column.
Mr Venables also accepts that red oak for some time has been a fringe species in European design and manufacture, with the bulk of US hardwood sales here comprising white oak, ash, tulipwood and walnut. But he’s confident too that this can change and says the American industry is “poised to respond”.
“The European hardwood design vision has been quite narrow – it’s been light or dark and not much in between,” he said. “But at the recent Salone de Mobile furniture exhibition in Milan there was a clear tendency to warmer toned timber, both in solid form and veneer. At the Wallpaper Handmade show-within-a-show in Milan, the Blushing Bar red oak showcase, which was developed and made for us by leading designer-maker Sebastian Cox and architects Chan and Eayrs, also generated tremendous interest. Sebastian took advantage of the wood’s porosity to inject it with red calligraphy ink to achieve a stunning effect and it provoked a fantastic reaction.”
The use of tens of thousands of square metres of red oak flooring and interior panelling and cladding in the multi-million pound new Bloomberg European headquarters in London has also elicited widespread positive response.
“The feedback from designers and architects hasn’t been ‘that’s interesting, but it would look so much better in white oak’. It’s been ‘wow, that looks great’!”
Also playing in red oak’s favour in an increasingly environmentally aware design and specification sector is growing appreciation that sustainability requires the market to use the species the forest offers – and red oak comprises a third of the US hardwood forest.
“Eventually the demand pressure on a handful of species will tell and potentially put the resource at risk,” said Mr Venables. “Moreover, red oak is up to the task. It’s strong, durable, bends and machines well. It’s suitable for interior and exterior use, if preservative or thermo-treated, and it’s available in lumber, veneer, plywood, panels and in a wide range of dimensions. It’s also a good looking timber and, while care needs to be taken in sourcing, as colour and grain varies by region, it can happily blend into the current oak look and fashion and the trend for high quality hardwood generally. Importantly, at the moment it’s also very affordable.”
As with other US hardwoods, he added, red oak is also backed by a range of tools demonstrating its environmental performance; AHEC’s online carbon calculator, its interactive forest map showing forest growth and take-off, and its American Hardwood Environmental Profile, which details carbon and other environmental impacts of hardwood shipments to any destination worldwide.
“The latest revision of the ground-breaking Seneca Creek risk assessment study of the US hardwood resource is also complete and will be presented at Interzum,” said Mr Venables.
“This reconfirms its near zero risk of illegality and also addresses sustainability.”
Over coming months, AHEC’s promotional campaign will take this multi-faceted messaging about red oak, and the wider US hardwoods story to a range of audiences across the UK and the rest of Europe.
“Virtually every week we will be involved in an event or activity, undertaking talks, organising seminars, and commissioning specific pieces and installations highlighting red oak’s potential,” said Mr Venables.
Besides the Blushing Bar, Sebastian Cox has also designed red oak furniture for the AHEC stand at Interzum; a long bar-height table with matching folding chairs that can be stored beneath. A red oak furniture collection from leading Polish product designer Tomek Rygalik is also launching in Warsaw in September.
In another innovative step, AHEC is teaming with long-term collaborator Benchmark Furniture to put red oak through its processing paces alongside US white and European oak. This will generate a detailed comparative report for joinery and design sectors.
“It’s a unique opportunity,” said Mr Venables. “Benchmark are devoting their highly sophisticated workshop to the project. They will go from timber selection and matching, through processing using the range of technology, from hand tools to CNC machining centres. They will look at structural performance, jointing, bending and laminating and a variety of finishing approaches; sanding, sand blasting, oiling, lacquering, bleaching and ebonising. We’ll also ask the Benchmark team what they look for in a hardwood. Clearly in some aspects one species will do better than the others, but we’ll record that too. We want real information.”
Further AHEC projects are in the pipeline, among them what it bills as one of its highest ever profile design projects, again in red oak and involving some of the best known names in the arts and heads of leading institutions. That’s as much as it can divulge right now, but more details will be released shortly.
And, underlining the US hardwood sector’s commitment to further develop its European connections and grow demand not just for red oak but the range of species, its members will be out in force at the Interzum show in Cologne in May. Two AHEC pavilions will house 28 exhibitors and between 35 and 40 suppliers are expected at the show in total.
“It will be a great opportunity for trade and the specifier sector to renew existing contacts and make new ones and to see the latest the industry has to offer,” said Mr Venables, adding that the species on exclusive display on AHEC’s own stand, including in Sebastian Cox’s furniture, will of course be red oak.
