then, we need new markets, new suppliers, new trading partners, real fast, this is not easy but is absolutely necessary to accomplish to all degree possible
I think this may be the best solution in the long run. There is nothing quite so dangerous as depending on a small customer base. If it weren't a tariff issue, then perhaps some other time, it could be a major currency devaluation removing the buying power of a country. Perhaps such a thing may even be on the horizon as well, in which case,...Yikes!!!
It seems to me that industries have to make it their business to develop alternative markets. In the case of the lumber industry in Canada, I am reminded of an email from a Japanese architect friend who wrote to tell me how he had been over to spend a couple of weeks in the Vancouver area to visit construction sites and watch house framing methods here. Apparently, a few Canadian framers did some kind of demo in Japan shortly after as part of the same program. He wrote about how astounded he was at the speed with which our framers work, and also at how a small team of honking big Canadian dudes could literally hammer a house together in a couple of days. He considered this most impressive. Also, that the quality of the lumber was mind-blowing to him..and our methods of framing roof trusses, creating laminated beams, etc.. He said that we have the kind of lumber that is NEEDED in order to do this kind of work and that they aren't used to seeing the same things in Japan.
A couple of years ago, another email friend came over from Amsterdam to visit me for a month. She is a carpenter there and owns a business doing house renos and building and installing kitchen cabinetry. Of course, she was most interested in visiting the lumber yards and builder's supply stores, so we did quite a bit of that. She was in awe of the fact that we can go to just about any yard or store and buy beautiful clear pine, hardwood boards and so on. Just before she visited me, she had had to order some hardwood from a lumber dealer in England, wait a few weeks for it to be delivered and pay almost its weight in gold just so that she could get a few boards to match the pantry doors in a kitchen she was working on. When she saw how "cheap" the off-the-rack cherry, walnut and oak was in one place I took her to, she said she was tempted to see what it would cost to have a few small pieces flown home. Also, I had just finished installing some tall low-E argon casements in a few rooms of my house and she was really jazzed by them. She said that there was (at that time..2 years ago), *nothing* in the way of windows in the Netherlands that came anywhere near these in design and quality. She had never seen ANYTHING like them and fiddled around opening and closing them and checking how the screens popped in and out for cleaning, etc.. I took her around to see windows at a couple of distributor's showrooms and she was pretty excited by the type of construction technology we have here...and also, once again, at the materials. Another friend in Germany has since mentioned the same thing.. and yet, here we are... my area of Ontario and Quebec with many large factories pumping out these windows, and apparently you can't get them at all in Europe. What is wrong with this picture??
And then...one need only take a good look at something like Ikea furniture, to understand that the rest of the world *does not* have access to the quality of lumber that we take for granted here in Canada. Just check out the pine tables and wardrobes at Ikea. Most of the "boards" are laminated from thin "sticks" of pine. Granted, they do quite a nice job of their lamination and finishes, but the wood they are working with is more like something we probably ship to the pallet factories or that you can pick up for free out of the scrap bin at the local sawmills up the valley from where I live. Hell, people around here burn bigger chunks of pine as kindling around here.
Anyhow, I think that we sell ourselves very short to even be marketing our lumber in the U.S. What I would *really* like to see is a major push on developing alternative markets in countries that would consider our lumber to be a deal at prices that are probably far in excess of what the U.S. is paying. Seems to me that if it can be cost effective to ship container-loads of wheat to overseas markets, then it can't be too outrageous to imagine container-loads of dressed, high-quality lumber sailing off to Japan and other Pac-Rim countries, or our eastern clear pine and energy-efficient window assemblies on their way to Europe... Maybe this is more of an education and market development issue. I would sure like to see this happen because I think we'd then be in a position of trying to figure out what we are going to sell to who and for how much. Let's face it.. lumber is a valuable resource, so why aren't we marketing it that way? |
