I note in this week's news that a letter written by Prince Charles - described by a High Court judge as "unexpected and unwelcome" - led to the cancellation of the multi-billion pound Chelsea Barracks development in West London. This royal faux-pas will bag the developers millions in damages. It makes me question what was HRH up to? You see, I thought the days when sovereigns decided such matters were long gone but obviously I must be mistaken. 
 
All right, I concede, the Prince didn't actually decide the matter, and ironically he was making a point about the aesthetics of the development that many might well agree with, however, we have democratic processes for deciding these things and surely part of living in a free, open and fair society is that we are all equal - Prince Charles as well - and we must all live with decisions we don't necessarily like providing they have emerged from a due process. This development was approved by all the proper democratically elected authorities.
 
I don't mind confessing that one of the reasons why this matters so much to me is self interest. Many of Timbmet's customers would profit greatly from this particular high-end development at a time when work is not generally so plentiful. For the timber industry that means a lot of hardwood and veneered boards would have been sold. 
 
The high-end joinery sector benefits massively from schemes like Chelsea Barracks. Candy and Candy, the developers, already have a track record for bringing quite extraordinary innovative projects to the London residential property market. Lord Rogers, the world renowned architect, can also claim a proven record of designing buildings that truly enhance London's architectural pedigree. These apartments would have challenged the core skills of British woodworking with groundbreaking and extravagant designs. The impetus an exclusive development of this nature gives to our industry drives standards of global excellence that we badly need to nurture.
 
As frustrating as it may be that UK property developers can be delayed for years by our cumbersome planning process, when a decision is finally generated it's really unfortunate that HRH goes and sabotages it. So here's my big idea; lets go and sue Prince Charles for the business we have all lost as a result of his letter writing. No doubt he thinks he has done a good turn for London's sky line. I think he has let our industry down badly by interfering in a process that society has decided is the democratic one which should not be meddled with by privilege laden princes. 

One of the past traditional treasures of Timbmet was the "homegrown" yard on Cumnor Hill.  There one could stroll along dirt tracks, through lines of neatly laid out boulles - mostly oak but other species too - savouring the aroma of timbers slowly drying in Oxfordshire's gentile rural surroundings.  Perfectly stacked, 'through and through' sawn logs might sit literally for years until they were considered ready for kilning and selling to discerning customers.
 
It's all gone now, devastated in the last decade by cheaper but actually higher quality square edged sawn packs from Eastern Europe; no split ends, no checks, no knots, no bends, no smells...just metre after metre of perfect, mild oak ready for use with frankly far less trouble for the purchaser.
 
Two trips last week reminded me of the old yard.  I was in Poland, the guest of one of our suppliers.  One could rarely, if ever, expect English logs to get close to the quality I saw there.  The Polish product is wide, clear, straight and flat with so little defect that the boards could almost have been tropical. The forests of Eastern Europe have presumably been left for generations untouched in order to grow such fine timbers.
 
The UK woodland story was, and still is, very different.  We have been raiding our best trees for centuries clearing the prime stands for shipbuilding, stately homes, educational institutions, furniture and last, but by no means least, naval warfare.  Our built heritage is there for all to see but sadly in the forestry department it is woefully diminished. 
 
"Not entirely so" says Philip Koomen, on my other visit this week to his admirable furniture workshop in Checkendon.  There you can savour craftsmen built tables, benches, chairs and other quality pieces all made from character English timbers carefully seasoned in Philip's very own backyard.  
 
Of course Philip is correct and there is still much to be cherished in home grown species - his furniture more than speaks for itself - but alas Timbmet's large scale UK "homegrown" production is gone forever replaced by the worthy foreign alternative. 
 
If it is character one seeks then one must search small scale and locally.  There are great UK sawmills where local grown timbers can still be found.  They can be pricey but then so they should be...nature's character product, as I witnessed close up this week, remains well worth paying for.

 

You wouldn't expect a general election to pass without some political comment from any self respecting blogger.  Now don't get too excited...I have no intention of telling you who to vote for.  What I can reveal is my personal recommendation on where I believe the next government should first look for all those much talked about savings in government spending.

One of the relatively minor stories to hit the headlines this election week concerned an equal pay claim in Birmingham City Council.  An incidental fact to emerge - to my utter amazement - is that the workers who empty the street bins in Birmingham earn £32,000 a year! 

I have always been one to believe that there should be a reasonable, minimum wage for all, but I still can't help comparing the Birmingham bin emptiers to very highly skilled artisans in my industry, who will have trained for years to learn their craft, and rarely earn as much as £32,000 a year.  By the way there will be a generous pension attached to the local authority income as well

The artisans of the timber industry diligently pay their local taxes from their sub £32,000 a year incomes to fund, amongst other things, the emptying of street bins...a vital task I am certain but with great respect to the folks who do it not one that requires the skill-set of a joiner, carpenter or cabinet maker. 

How can local authority pay scales have become so out of kilter with private industry?  How can we have an economy that so undervalues manufacturing against the public sector?  The answer is pretty obvious...it's not really economically viable at all; it's economic madness and an abuse of public finance.  The challenge to our new government, whichever persuasion they happen to be of, is to address this wrong. 

Everyone seems to agree that government spending is too high.  Doubts have been expressed about where wastage can be found.  May I humbly suggest to our newly elected Prime Minister that he can start the search for savings in the street bins of Birmingham?

 

"Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does."
Stuart Henderson Britt

Last autumn a group representing the high and mighty of the UK timber industry met in London to consider the future of 'Wood for Good'.  For those readers unfamiliar with this campaign have a look at the web site www.woodforgood.com .  In brief, it's an excellent generic promotion of timber, sponsored by contributions from across the industry.  I am pleased to say that in spite of the downturn it was enthusiastically agreed to continue to fund the campaign.

In my daily work I never cease to be amazed by the lack of marketing and advertising in the timber industry.  I see some great businesses with tremendous products completely failing to inform their markets about what they actually do.  Conversely, and equally incredibly, I see some pretty poor products that sell remarkably well simply because the manufacturers know the marketing game so well.

'Wood for Good' is all about informing the public about the great benefits of using timber.  It's a generic campaign so no single type of timber is specially promoted.  Indeed, I would argue that for ordinary punters wood is just wood, so if your average consumer sees an advert promoting the stuff they get an important message irrespective of whether the imagery illustrates hardwood, softwood or veneer.  If it looks good and performs well that's enough to stimulate interest.

If we in the timber industry don't shout about the benefits no one else will do it for us, though trust me we will never run short of noisy detractors. 

I know that national media campaigns are expensive but it costs even more to sustain our businesses on limited sales because too few customers know about or understand what we do.  We have to rally together and promote ourselves and accept that, as Lord Leverhulme once famously said "Half the money I (we) spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I (we) don't know which half."

It's of enormous credit to the industry that we see through our competitive urges to unite behind a common cause.  It just has to be good for wood.

Last week I received an urgent call from Westminster to ask me if I would support a ten minute rule bill in Parliament to outlaw illegally logged timber.  Intuitively I agreed.  Actually I wasn't in the mood to think too much about the question because I was rather tired having just stepped off a plane from a business trip to India. 

Reflecting on the call since then I can't help but contrast the high moral ground which politicians and NGO's so naturally favour to the actual world I trade in.  There could be no better destination than India to illustrate the point.  There I heard about plenty of European companies who are blatantly flouting European laws banning the importation of certain species; very frustrating for those of us trying to do the right thing.

Many Indian traders have absolutely no respect for environmental protection.  To them logs are available, they are perfectly tradable and Western regulations are just an artificial obstacle that can easily be circumvented.  The traders' response to any accusation of illegality is surprised bewilderment that anyone could pass up a good deal.  Disappointing - to me personally and no doubt to our politicians - after so many years of trying to do the right thing.

Now before any reader starts to think my problem is with the Indians lets think about the other side of this story.  The only real reason illegal timbers are still traded into Europe is that us Europeans (including British) ultimately still buy them.   

I expect that in their hearts our politicians know that no amount of legislation can actually halt illegal trading.  That's down to each and every one of us as consumers.  The truth is plain...there are enough markets that don't care to still carry on destroying the world's remaining precious forests. 

Whilst this is the case then those of us that do care - and there are plenty - must keep up the pressure in every way we can to stop illegal timber from entering our markets, and to educate those who still buy them that they are making a big mistake.

Here in Oxford we are plotting a quiet revolution.  Most other industries would discreetly snigger when they hear what we are doing but the timber industry takes time to embrace the new world of hi-tech.  So what's the big change?  More and more customers are discovering the benefits of buying their timber on-line, over the web.   
 
Are Amazon or E-Bay worried?  I don't think so.  But the purveyors of timber who still stick to the old ways may just want to sit up and take note.  Customers can now log on to a database of £15 million worth of timber and panel products, conveniently select what they want and buy with a simple click of a mouse.  Just like that.  Easy, cheap, convenient...and hardly the stuff of revolution in most other industries. One can even use a clever piece of optimizing, on-line software to find a specification without wading through hundreds of packs.
 
So why wouldn't everyone buy timber this way?  Beats me.  I have no idea.  I buy groceries, books, electronic goods, clothes, movies, music and goodness knows what else on-line.  Yet timber has largely bypassed the internet revolution - until now that is.
 
Years ago my predecessors told me it would never catch on.  They weren't completely wrong.  There are still die-hards out there who run businesses without computers and prefer to spend hours on the phone pricing and buying their materials.  They have yet to discover that in addition to the convenience, internet trading also does away with the need for old style volumes of inventory.  In an age where credit is hard to come by buying your timber on-line is even therapeutic.  Instead of lying awake worrying about how to pay the bills one could log on during the night, place an order and actually free up cash with just-in-time, next day deliveries.
 
I guess it takes time for new ideas to bed in.  Some of our customers have indeed embraced our so called revolution as second nature, and for the others we have no problem in continuing to play the role of the old fashioned supplier.  It's just sad that as an industry, on so many fronts, we fail to push the barriers down.  Frankly, I think it says a lot about the timber industry's failure to move with the times.  Instead of embracing progress we do have a habit of regarding change with nervous suspicion and fear.  But change is happening and continues to happen and we all need to be a part of it.
 

What have wooden handrails on a river bridge near my house and beneath the Royal Festival Hall got in common, apart from the fact that they are overlooking the Thames?  Answer:  they are both relatively new, made from inappropriate species and as a result are decomposing prematurely.  Why?  Almost certainly because the timber used was specified primarily on political and environmental criteria, without technical considerations.

Years ago a Local Authority works manager wouldn't have thought twice about proposing to use Burmese Teak; a wonderful outdoor species which nearly lasts forever.  But today, Burmese Teak can't be used because understandably, we find it politically unacceptable to use timber from a country run by despicable military tyrants.

Waste is the inevitable outcome and the environment suffers doubly from the trashing of good wood and its decomposition into the atmosphere.  The Burmese tyrants still remain just as tyrannical and the old works manager, who knew his timbers, has been replaced by a grey suited clerk, who knows his politics.

There is no easy solution here but the worst of it is that the generals continue to live high on the hog while the Burmese population suffer terribly because we don't buy their timber or other products.  These desperately poor folk endure virtually all the pain, and we have to replace rotten handrails.

I genuinely have no idea how to remove the detestable regime that runs Burma.  All the trade embargoes the western world can muster have not made the slightest difference to the Burmese military government and as long as India and China don't support sanctions, there is no chance of them ever being effective.  We have to think of a more humane way to bring about regime change rather than just impose futile economic sanctions.  Answers on a postcard…

Out of respect for our democracy we have to accept that the handrails can't be replaced with Burmese Teak.  I just hope that the clerk checks with TRADA as well as the NGO community before the replacement species is selected. 

 

Over the past 12 months, as the recession has set in, loggers stopped logging, saw millers stopped sawing, importers stopped importing.  There was just no point in producing for loss making price levels.  Better leave the trees in the ground to grow for another year or two and just hibernate through those bleak winter months.

The timber that was sold came from overblown inventories and it was a similar story in many industries around the globe.   Finally, the cycle has begun to ease and skeletal inventories will soon need to be supplemented in order to maintain surviving levels of trade.  It’s beginning to look like getting out of bed in the morning may once again be worthwhile.

In three or four months from now importers will be sufficiently willing to re-stock such that we will finally agree to pay a price that makes it worthwhile for the loggers to log and the saw millers to saw.  This will bring sighs of relief as reality creeps back into pricing and margins are driven by the need for profit as opposed to the need to generate cash.

For the end user, the timber sale of the century will draw to a close (American White Oak has been trading at prices not seen for 25 years!).  But this will not mean rampant price increases as demand remains too weak to fuel greed.  Prices will just return to a state of sustainable normality, perhaps ten or fifteen percent up on today’s levels, though well short of the highs of recent boom years.

In my years of running businesses there is never a period when it seems easy.  Often you only realise belatedly how good times were because as the months roll on it gets increasingly harder.  This rule may finally flip as 2009 unwinds because I'm not sure it could get much tougher for any of us.  Let's see whether I am still thinking that way come November with prices increasing and a great deal of cost eradicated from the whole supply chain…

So many people are talking about what they make of the budget.  Normally nobody seems very bothered and it’s forgotten by Thursday.  This week is different.  Sentiment seems to have shifted from mild economic optimism in the days leading up to the Chancellor's statement to outright gloom once it came out.  The discussion rages on.  Why?

Well, could it be because the stark reality of the recession is finally catching up with politicians and the public sector?  Here in the private sector we have now had the best part of a year to get used to the idea that the decade long boom is well and truly over.  We have seen large scale redundancies, pay cuts, very significant falls in profits and widespread bankruptcies. 

Structural imbalances such as the death of private sector pensions, overbearing government red tape and frivolous expenditure have been forced out from under the carpet.  Everyone knows the problems are there even if we don't yet know how to deal with them. 

Yet this very week I can still read articles in my local paper claiming that the public sector is being underpaid with unions seeking 10% annual awards for professional groups such as teachers and Local Authority managers demanding pay parity with business leaders.   

Don't get me wrong...I wish we could all have 10% and more but the reality is that the severe austerity measures of the last twelve months in the private sector are only just beginning to trickle in to the public sector.  This trickle has to turn into a flood because our government is extremely short of money.  It’s wake up time!

At the higher political level reality is catching up with the sometimes astronomical impact of government spending.  The eventual outcome is going to be extremely unpleasant for millions of public sector employees who are presently still far better sheltered from the downturn than their private sector counterparts.

The upshot of all this, I fear, is likely to be very high unemployment...bad news whatever your political persuasion or economic philosophy.  Some are already well on the way to readjusting for the new era.  I fear that the budget is the first stark prod for the rest that harder times are upon us.  Hence the feelbad.

One bright spot...CO2 emissions will be right down so the environment can breath a sigh of relief.

A few years ago Timbmet launched a really good new product; an oak laminated stair string with some very clever engineered veneer work on the faces to give the impression of a fourteen foot, clear board.  Development of the product took a lot of local market knowledge combined with much globe trotting to find three specialist suppliers; one for the core, one for the veneers and one for the assembly.
 
Initially the market reception was luke warm but, backed by some expensive marketing, a lot of energy and crucially a very good design, the product found a market and began to sell well.  Not very many months later competitors brought out their own cheaper imitations and even though the quality never quite matched ours in no time at all the product was being traded as a commodity.  We never did make good money on our strings which by the way we still sell.
 
I was reminded of the story as I strolled around the Ecobuild exhibition yesterday.  In my mind I was comparing the incredible innovation I saw in certain product sectors with the frankly rather stale offerings of the hardwood sector.  Is this because timber has little to offer?  Not likely, as we all keep reminding the market it's the most environmentally friendly product one can use and incredibly diverse in its properties.
 
Why then the lack of good designs?  Credit crunch aside one can only conclude that the topic we have mastered least as an industry is how to protect a good idea. We seem to have made an art form of copying (undermining?) innovation but we don't seem to know how to combine the crafts of creating a new product with the challenge of protecting it from the ravages of a free market. 
 
The impact is a double whammy.  As someone who loves innovation it dawned on me that my stairy tale has made me very cautious of investing, which is a great shame because I know of lots of great ideas for superior forest products that desperately need to be marketed.  If only we could protect the designs more effectively we could make these products viable.
 
The good news is that even if we have become somewhat risk averse we continue to experiment with new ideas.  I suppose the ultimate challenge is to develop products that are so clever it takes a lot more time and energy to copy them.