Jonathan Kitzen is a man on a mission. His aim – to break the oak mindset which captivates the UK hardwood market.
Demand for oak, and white oak in particular, is, said the chief executive officer of Big Hard-woods Ltd, symptomatic of the “McDonalds-isation” of the timber trade – basically people not venturing beyond a few basic timber species. Not that he is against oak. Big Hardwoods does sell the species itself – heritage 300mm-wide flooring products for example – but its raison d’être is about offering a huge variety of more offbeat hardwoods. These include mango, robina, white walnut, black palm, bay, cinnamon and Kentucky coffee – some of the 300-400 species which the company sources.
Clearly, Big Hardwoods is targeting the more bespoke end of the market, as it boldly declares on its website: “We cater to people who want to be different, who don’t shop at IKEA, and who realise that spending a little bit more on their wood products is an investment in their homes and business that pays them a dividend and is not an expense.”
Global exposure
Mr Kitzen, an American with a background in film production and commercial and residential development, believes the UK wood industry is introverted and does not expose itself to global timber products. “There are a lot of companies who have a large variety of timbers but who only cater for bowl makers and woodturners. We can get the wood cut in any dimension and cut to specification,” he said. “We are interested in doing the arty design stuff. The whole idea is that the wood product looks like it comes from a tree, not a factory.”
He set up Big Hardwoods about three years ago, reasoning that England was a gateway to Europe and the market here was quite robust. The Leicester operation now has an annual turnover of about £2m and usually has between 7-14 containers of wood in stock. There is a sales office in Moscow and plans for a presence in Dubai.
Prior to his TTJ interview, Mr Kitzen met a typical potential customer – a businessman renovating a large house and wanting the best woods money could buy. Black palm and black walnut were some of the species discussed for flooring, panelling and worktops.
Big Hardwoods adopts a “solutions-oriented” approach, said Mr Kitzen, backed by research, data and performance characteristics on different wood products, to help clients choose the best species for the application.
High profile contracts have included fit-outs at The Ritz and at a house in Highgate, north London, which included rain tree for stairs and 8in black walnut flooring.
Mr Kitzen has also tried to get traditional oak frame building companies to use black walnut on the grounds, he says, that, although more expensive, it is twice as stable as oak and would give a very different visual appeal.
He also rates robina very highly, because the honey-coloured wood is harder than oak and outperforms it in exterior applications due to its high oil content. “The reason you do not see it in any big quantity is it’s considered a by-product in harvesting.”
Then there is mango which offers four times the stability of oak, blue lobo which has a blue tinge, and fragranced cinnamon. Big Hardwoods also sources plantation teak from Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador. Other timbers it can source include plantation varieties of rare and protected species such as small leaf mahogany (from the Dominican Republic) and lignum vitae (Argentina), rated as the hardest timber in the world.
Availability of so many unfamiliar or treasured species inevitably brings up the environmental issue, on which Mr Kitzen has some strong views. He does not touch Africa, Asia or the Amazon basin due to the high levels of illegal logging and the threat to certain species. Typically, he sources from North America, other areas of South America and the Caribbean. He believes in species management, replanting and doing your homework on sourcing. He’s not a big fan of chain of custody certification, which he described as inventory management which is not well suited to developing countries.
“There’s no clear solution to the certification issue and to expect that one certification system will solve all the problems on earth is ignorant. Every country has its own needs and own species. Some are served well by chain of custody, others are not. It’s a species-geographic issue.”
That said, Big Hardwoods is talking to both BM TRADA Certification and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. It will soon launch a BM TRADA-audited range soon, aimed at offering clients with “lots of money” unique timbers, factoring in a small added cost to pay for replanting.
