Marketing

Tim, I really like this idea. I know that many of us have played around with this for years, but the marketing is another career altogether. If we can use the networking at DAP to start to feel this out, maybe pull together some material, I think the time is ripe for this.

Carl

We are definitely interested in supporting this development.

Our DRAFTWOOD program is a model we wish to share where we can. It is bottom up change that uses the source story to sell the goods. There are benefits that are supported by the current LEEDS green certification system. I look forward to growing this approach to helping us all make a living doing the right things in the forest.

We have a brochure called “What Every Forest Landowner Needs to Know about Modern Horse Logging”. We print them and then give the Biological Woodsmen a rubber stamp to put their contact information on a space on the back. We just had it reworked by our local high school image technology class and will take it to the printers as soon as we get through the year and figure out our budget of lack of for the coming year. We have also supplied the woodsmen with banners to post at their landings advertising their jobs too.

There is another concept we will share is called Consumer Supported Forestry (CSF). This is a take off on the CSA garden deal and will bring the consumer into the forest to see the actual trees their products will be made from. It also allows some money down on a project that lets the ground level worker afford to produce value added products. We have had folks actually furnish most of their home with DRAFTWOOD furniture, flooring, paneling, beams and anything we could make from what we harvest. This can also be a project that works with a landowner that is building on their own property.

Lots of good stuff to share on our marketing strategies.

Hope everyone gets through the holidays with a sense of joy among their families and friends.

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I can’t add much except to say, “right on,” to having a marketing thread here. Around here Jason Glick has really done well finding appropriate work for himself, his pair and several of us to help on jobs where he uses the mill as well as the horses. He has been able to get steady winter work from landowners who want wood milled on-site for building projects. Myself on the other hand being a somewhat thick, “square-head,” and chopping away on the traditional model find that I often do not make good money for me or the horses but do good work for the landowner. Not bad altogether but I keep having to jump on the skidder crews to pay the bills. A marketing tool for products that are going to firewood, pulp or poor scale at the local family-store mill would be a great help.
Great thinking guys
jimbojim

Tim is there a way we could set up what we talked about the other day? may be even just a thread with what we have to offer right now. And on another thread what some of use might be looking for. This would work until something better gets going. Taylor Johnson