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Missed previous Wood Connections issues? 

For busy businesses who often don't have a marketing agency to delegate to, being smart with your time and budget matters. This one-day session will help you learn to select the best channels to connect with your target audience, how to use those channels effectively, how to manage your time, and forget the rest - guilt free because you're marketing smarter, not harder!

Locations & Dates:

Click here to register or for more information. 

Jonathan Christian is the Creator and Chief Strategist at We Make Stuff Happen, a unique BC based Consulting Consortium helping businesses and non-profits locally and internationally tell their story through digital networks. A recognized Social Media Thought Leader, Jonathan brings tremendous energy, experience and enthusiasm to his sessions. 

Jonathan has trained hundreds of local business how to "get and go Social" In many cases reducing existing marketing budgets but delivering a much higher ROI (Return on Investment) You'll learn that the real value of Social Media is ROR (Return on Relationship).

University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers are taking engineered timber to new levels of construction performance through a computerized piece of technology that is a North American first.

Called the Hundegger Robot Drive, it sits in its own sawdust-proof chamber at the Centre for Advanced Wood Processing, part of the university's Forest Sciences Centre. It has been described as the world's most advanced piece of wood joinery equipment.

The complicated cuts it can perform are proving to researchers that wood can be a precision building material of the future.

The researchers intend to apply the machine's high-tech performance to engineered wood products, said Iain Macdonald, managing director of the Centre for Advanced Wood Processing, showing that intricate wood-to-wood connections can be done using computers and robotics.

It's a step toward developing a high-valued advanced wood components industry in B.C., he said.

Wood is making a big comeback in institutional and multi-family construction. Richmond's Olympic Oval and UBC's Earth Sciences Building are examples.

Click here to read the article 

Click here to watch the feature on Global News: http://globalnews.ca/video/1142154/biv-ubcs-wood-engineering-robot  

Trade Show Booths Should Strive For Individuality

Above all else, the most important consideration for any successful marketing strategy is individuality. It's easy to be sucked in to the latest design trends and try to match that really cool company's color patterns, but this is not a good idea. If attendees leave a show unable to differentiate your organization from that of your competitors, then all of your efforts will have been for nothing. You are a unique company, so your custom trade show display needs to reflect that in an equally unique way. Remain open-minded about what your booth can look like and think beyond the standard designs that often populate the event floor.

Make Sure To Focus On Lighting

In most cases, the lighting within a given trade show hall is just as unflattering for trade show booths as it is for the visitors in attendance. You wouldn't hang a beautiful painting in a dimly lit room, so why would you let your uniquely designed exhibit languish in the darkness? Use lighting to creatively illuminate key aspects of your booth, highlight samples, or to "shed some light" on important signage. By utilizing different colors and intensities of light, your exhibit can even be customized to better fit in with a desired theme or be adjusted to match the particular product line being featured. Lighting is one of the most dramatic ways to add visual appeal and should not be undervalued.

Click here to read the entire article

Rumin Mann  

Pacific Homes, based in Cobble Hill, BC, manufactures custom prefabricated home and cottage packages using innovative building solutions including their energy-saving Pacific SmartWallTM Systems. The company was founded in 1959 by Ken McKinnon as Pacific Builders' Supplies. With the addition of Pacific Truss in 1969 and Pacific Homes in 1981, the company has gone from strength to strength. Still operating as a family business, now run by Ken's sons, Pacific Homes spans the globe.

Keeping up with market trends and being on the edge of innovation, Pacific Homes developed the Pacific SmartWallTM System. A pre-insulated, thermally broken wall system that minimizes thermal bridging, reduces the possibility of moisture buildup, is non-toxic and fire retarding, reduces sound transmission and air infiltration, is efficient and cost effective to build, and is longer lasting than other wall systems. It is available in R-30, R-40, and R-50 systems.

Pacific Homes provides numerous advantages to their customers with the most notable being that they can custom build any plan the customer brings them. They also provide custom designing at no extra cost. Other advantages include a faster build time, less on site labour, swift protection from inclement weather, integrated computer assisted design, an energy-efficient GREEN home, outstanding customer service, and less stress. These premium quality homes can be shipped anywhere in the world.

Pacific Homes is proud to have been the major supplier for Cowichan's new Regional Visitor Centre. This uniquely designed building no doubt catches your eye and exudes modern beauty; the journey there had its extreme challenges and glorious successes. The building owners enlisted Pacific Home to provide their service, knowledge, and expertise due to their reputation of providing highly creative, custom, innovative, and out-of-the-box designs. That being said, they are not ashamed to say that the intricate geometry of the Visitor Centre sent their design team on an adventure finding a solution for the 30 foot raked walls and the fact that most of the components did not run perpendicular or parallel to each other. It was a challenge they embraced, finishing triumphantly successful and only further reassured them that there is nothing beyond their reach and reinforcing their motto, "If you can dream it, we can build it!"

For more information on Pacific Homes, visit their website:  

www.pacific-homes.com  

 

Roy Manion  

In our last Wood Connections, we outlined our sessions with architects in the Pacific Northwest. I am pleased to advise that by any measure, they were very successful. As I tweeted on our last day, "3 days, 3 cities, and 100 architects" (proof that the social media workshop, 'Savvy Social Media for Business Workshop' we took last month is having an impact). This was followed up by Buildex last week where BC Wood and 11 member companies participated in the "BC Wood Pavilion". While it is too early to analyze final results, I can safely state that most, if not all, had a great show. Sandwiched between our Pacific Northwest sessions and Buildex, we held a lunch & learn session and continued our preparations for our Alberta architect seminars, which are now a little over two weeks away.

Pacific Northwest Architect Seminars:

BC Wood, accompanied by 5 companies from industry, held our first series of architect seminars on Feb 11th, 12th, and 13th in Seattle, Portland, and Spokane respectively. The calibre of presentations from industry representatives and the information provided was very well received by the architects in all three cities. As one architect stated, he had never received so much information on new products at one session and that this was one of the best sessions he had ever attended. This was great praise for our presenters and the quality of their sessions.

Seattle, being the largest city we visited, had overwhelmingly the greatest turnout. Part of this was due to the great assistance we received from the Canadian Consulate in Seattle. They followed up our invitation by sending it under the Canadian Consulate banner. The result, as stated in our last Wood Connections, was more architects wanting to register than we had room to accommodate. Consequently, we had to give our regrets to 20 architects, all of whom are anxious to attend our next session and to which we advised would get priority.

Alberta Seminars:

Like the sessions we just held in the US, we are in the process of arranging similar sessions in Alberta in the cities of Edmonton, Calgary, and Lethbridge over 3 days in March -11th, 12th & 13th. Invitations have gone out to all 3 places and many RSVPs have already come in with Calgary having the greatest response - no surprise. To date, we have over 50 architects signed up for the 3 sessions with still 2 weeks to go.

BC's Specifiers Program:

Due to other activities, we have scaled back our lunch & learn sessions. Although, we held one session last Wednesday and have another booked for this week; both of these are on specific products. We are working on scheduling another 3 or 4 for March.

Buildex Vancouver

Buildex Vancouver was a good show for all involved. It certainly was a great venue for BC Wood to meet with specifiers and members from industry and we were kept busy throughout the event. It was also a good opportunity for me to meet the companies involved in Structure, one of BC Wood's programs that provide local BC Designers with the opportunity to gain some new business skills and work with a unique material. This year the material is Parallam and the participants designed and made swings from it.  

As always, should you want more information on any aspects of the Specifiers Program, please let me know by contacting me at rmanion@bcwood.com.

The Turkeybuild show in Istanbul is fast approaching. For a number of very good reasons this will be the fourth year that BC Wood has organized the participation of BC companies at this show. Turkey is one of the strongest of these regional economies within Europe. Turkey also has a long history and affinity of building with wood. With their growing affluence, Turks are rediscovering their traditional preference for wood construction, particularly, in higher-end residential and recreational home construction.

Last year, five BC companies and BC Wood's representative attended the Turkeybuild show and reported that there was very strong interest shown in BC's products and services by the local timber and building materials distributors. The products generating the most interest were specialty WRC lumber and exterior finishing, and prefabricated structures including log and timber frame homes and platform frame structures. Turkish companies showed a great deal of interest in partnering with Canadian companies that supply high quality wood products and more advanced building systems.

Last year, the Istanbul show drew over 110,000 visitors, many of them from the neighboring Eastern European and Islamic countries. For any company interested in participating in the Turkeybuild show as part of the BC Wood pavilion, please contact Brian Hawrysh at bhawrysh@bcwood.com or i at 604-882-7100 by Friday, Feb 14th, 2014.

A few comments, suggestions, and ideas for the industry...

The last few weeks have been extremely busy as we had two key trade events take place in the United States. These events, the BIA Hawaii tradeshow and mission and the IBS builders show in Las Vegas, were a hit with both our members and US buyers who stopped by our display.

At IBS, we had eleven member companies showcasing a wide selection of finished and semi-finished wood products to the over 78,000 buyers attending the show.

IBS is the premier builders show in North America and as such, is an important event for folks involved in the residential and light commercial construction sectors. New to IBS this year was the addition of The National Kitchen and Bath Show (KBIS), which brought a new level of interest and group of buyers to the event. Because IBS draws such a large cross section of builders and suppliers, it is often viewed as a bell-weather marker for the general state of health of the residential housing construction in the United States. The busier the show is, the better the health of this important industry. The good news out of IBS is that the show was well attended and very busy. Members were hustling to meet with builders, architects, and distributors over the three days of the event. In fact, the first couple of days of the show were the busiest that I have seen since before the downturn of 2007/08. Buyers from across the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Asia stopped by the coordinated BC Wood Pavilion to meet with our members and to discuss the opportunity to supply building materials to upcoming construction projects in their regions.

The general consensus from our members was that the show was great. Peter Raja, a partner of Kelowna based Norelco Cabinets, called it one of the best events that they have ever done. "We had some great introductions and meetings with builders, especially from California. I think we can finally create some sales into this state because of our participation at IBS; it was awesome!" Other members had similar stories and I think it is safe to assume that the US housing and construction market is finally back in a position of being a major contributor the overall health and strength of the US economy.

In the next issue of the Wood Connections newsletter, I will review some of the new products and trends seen at the IBS show, including the re-branding and launch of the former "Sauder Moldings" to the upscale "Metrie" label. We will also review the growth in the high-end residential construction market in the state of Hawaii. As always for more information on this show or on the US market please feel free to contact me at dfarley@bcwood.com

For many years BC Wood has produced a Japanese language brochure that included a member directory for companies interested in promoting themselves at all of our in-market trade events. As one of our last activities for this fiscal year, we are again re-producing this brochure but also adding Chinese and Korean versions so that members can access those markets as well through this cost effective promotional opportunity.

The is our main promotional piece for the Japanese market and thus is given out at every trade show, seminar, client visit, as well as in response to every inquiry received through our advertising/promotional campaigns. Therefore, it is the most cost effective way to reach a large number of industry people in Japan. The content of the brochure will be updated so that it meets the needs of the Chinese and Korean markets as well. In addition, the Member Directory Section will be unique to each market so that members can target the specific markets they are interested in.

Highlights  

• Be included in the brochure distributed at every BC Wood East Asian trade promotion activity for the next two years
• Introduce your company/product to thousands of wood industry contacts in China, Japan, and Korea in the most cost effective manner
• Develop new contacts and inquiries in these countries

Requirements

Members will be requested to submit their contact information, brief company/product profile, logo, and image/product shot which BC Wood will use to have your 1/4 page company introduction professionally translated and produced.

There is only a small fee to BC Wood members to join this program and it is your option to place an ad in 1, 2, or all 3 markets. Cost effective and simple! Just let Jim Ivanoff (ivanoff@canadawood.jp) know which versions you would like to be included in. Space is limited so please act fast!