I love timber trade dinners. I’ve been going to them for … well for a very long time! In my early days, it was all men. All in black dinner jackets. Everyone looked the same. No one stood out. It was hard to distinguish one from the other. Then one company, I think it might have been Southern Evans, asked its tough yet very female sheet materials buyer to attend. In a figure hugging purple dress, she stood out like a beacon. They and she dared to be different.
Medite also dared to be different. Originally based in Oregon and despite most of its directors never having stepped foot outside of the States, Medite dared to build a new plant in Ireland. In the first couple of years it lost a bucket load of money as the brand and product took time to gain market traction. But once it started to invest heavily in advertising, the brand went from strength to strength.
But being different isn’t a characteristic of the timber trade. Still being new to timber at the time, I hadn’t foreseen that when other companies built MDF plants they would simply try to produce more of exactly the same. Shouldn’t they have sought competitive advantage by daring to be different? When Medite introduced FR, MR, HD and other variants, many competitors simply copied them. Whilst Medite kept on daring to be different, others followed.
Introducing product variants is being different. But it’s only being a little bit different. Thus sales are often only a little bit incremental. Much of the sales volume of variants comes from cannibalisation. That’s not just an issue for Medite but for the timber industry as a whole.
For the timber industry to generate fully incremental sales volumes requires new technologies. Technologies that open up new end uses. However brilliant our production directors are at cutting another dollar out of the manufacturing cost (only to see that dollar given away by their sales directors), pioneering new technologies isn’t one of their core skill sets. Even MDF was invented by accident when the processing of some fibre fortunately went awry.
But we now have a new timber technology that is gaining sales by taking incremental business from non timber products. Winning new end uses, applications and customers. The innovative genius comes from a technology partner new to the timber trade.
We’re talking about acetylation. Acetylation of timber was developed by university boffins in Holland. (Surely this should encourage British timber companies to think of investing in more research by British Universities, especially by timber engineering departments).
Accsys Technologies obtained substantial venture capital funding to apply this technology. First, with the launch of Accoya, Accsys ‘dared to be different’ and Accoya is now in demand across Europe and in many emerging economies – even China. With margins protected by technology patents and its distributors by product licences, investing in new products can be attractive to the timber industry.
New domain
Accsys then looked to see what else it could do with acetylation. Working with Coillte Panel Products, together they developed the world’s first external, durable MDF, Medite Tricoya. It sells at a price point almost unheard of in this industry’s panel products sector but then it is for different end uses. Ones previously not the domain of timber products.
Daring to be different requires daring to adopt a different approach to marketing. Investing in market research to identify market opportunities. Setting up a new sales and distribution network. But most importantly doing what the timber trade hasn’t ever done well. Communicating and dialoguing with specifiers.
If this industry is to develop new products and new business opportunities, it must discover what specifiers need. Trading the price of timber commodities doesn’t tell you that. This information comes through entering into a dialogue with specifiers. Face to face conversations are good but often specifiers haven’t the time. They will dialogue via social media, something they use extensively to find out which products are new, relevant and how they’re better, so engage with them that way. And, of course, make sure they are made aware of your new products by advertising your wares in a way that gets you noticed. But that’s a no brainer, isn’t it?
Because Coillte Panel Products has dared to be different with Medite Tricoya it is being showered with awards for its innovation. Construction industry awards as well as timber industry accolades. Most notably it won Sustain Magazine’s Product of the Year. That’s why at Ecobuild, with its hundreds of exhibitors with their many thousands of products, Medite Tricoya was one of the ‘mustsee’ products. Specifiers flocked to the stand.
But Coillte Panel Products has yet to decide to build a plant to produce Medite Tricoya. When it does finally commit to that new plant, then the teams at Coillte and Accsys should don dazzlingly white tuxedos at all future timber industry dinners to show they dare to be different.
He (and now she too) who dares, wins.
