By IAN ROSS
Northern Ontario Business
The root has definitely turned for Buckstone Inc. After a decade of steady growth, the North Bay furniture-home decor exporting and handicraft trading company is hitting its stride in offering a one-of-a-kind product while weaving a story of a couple’s love for travel, business philosophy and environmental reclamation into a successful venture.
Company founders Jennifer McNutt Bywater, Buckstone’s president, and husband/secretary Brent Bywater have come a long way over 12 years since they were street vendors huddled under an umbrella at local festivals hawking strange-looking apparel from Southeast Asia.
Today, the company has grown into a 24-employee operation with a retail showroom, marketing operations and warehouse in North Bay and nearby Callander. Overseas, they partner with an artisan group in running a 20-person shipping and workshop facility in Bali, Indonesia, the source of their most popular item, teak root-crafted furniture.
Their unique offerings of eco-furniture have been regular show-stoppers on the home and garden show circuit for years and recent exposure on trade missions to the U.S. South-East and Mid-West, combined with a carefully planned and orchestrated expansion strategy is beginning to pay off.
Over the last two years, the company has realized a 65-per-cent revenue growth spurt thanks largely to an insatiable consumer appetite for teak root benches, tables, carvings and display units. Buckstone has been doggedly showcasing teak root furniture for seven years at North American trade shows.
Buckstone Inc. is comprised of three subsidiaries, Uprooted Designs, Rock Solid Creations and their original exporting-importing company Vested Interest Trading.
The Uprooted division produces the teak indoor and outdoor furniture. Each piece is made of roots that grew on Indonesian timber plantations, originally cut years before for the furniture and boat-building industry.
Rock Solid Creations produces and distributes stone ornaments, artifacts and functional garden and patio pieces produced from Canadian Shield rock by local artisans.
Their North American strategy is to secure regionally-based distributors to procure container lot shipments of teak furniture and distribute the products to mid-range to high-end garden, landscape design and supply stores.
The couple has built a vast wholesale network of more than 700 retailers across Canada and parts of the U.S. They ship 40-foot container-loads of goods, packed with 120 pieces of crafts apiece, directly from Indonesia to distributors in Vancouver, California, Connecticut and as far away as the U.K., Hungary, Germany, Japan, Ukraine, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic and Bermuda.
When they closed the books on their 2003 fiscal year last September, Buckstone enjoyed a banner year exporting 10 containers worth of goods from Southeast Asia.
Since Oct. 1, they have already shipped nine containers to their Callander warehouse or directly to distributors.
“We’re half-way through the year and we’re one container shy of last year’s volume,” says Brent, who expects to ship 15 container-loads this year with pending new distributorships coming in Detroit, Chicago and Atlanta.
www.uprooted.ca
