I know we’ve explored some of this territory before. But I hope it’s worth repeating, especially for those who may not have read all of our 220 pages.
Ever wonder what Amberwood is anyhow? And its brother Morado? As time went by, Thiel wanted a standard-priced offering that was unique and upscale, and fit a broad range of living environments. From the beginning we offered what I considered the premium woods of the world: Black Walnut, White Oak, Teak and Brazilian Rosewood (for very little upcharge) because we could, because we made our own veneer faces and laminated in-house. So we could buy flitches of raw veneer and use it as needed. That may seem ordinary, but it’s really quite far from it. Most speaker manufacturers don’t even make their own cabinets. And the cabinet maker doesn’t lay up their own veneers, but rather buys veneered panels ready to machine. By 1990 we were making 5 models in 5 standard finishes plus practically unlimited custom options. Can you say complicated?
A growth strategy was to reduce variety by creating a target finish that would allow a large percentage of sales from stock rather than made to order. Our demand was fairly evenly spread among the existing finishes, so I went shopping for something new. Landing on a domestic species would have been nice, since we had two world-class veneer mills within 80 miles of us. But, that didn’t materialize.
What did materialize was a walk-about to South America with Jungle-Jim Martin a second-generation woodman who ran Marwood, a leading specialty veneer importer down the road in Louisville, and president of "The Hardwood Forestry Fund", a leading industry conservation group. We planned our first joint trip in 1989 specifically to identify a good supply channel for a magnificent wood from responsible forestry practice, that we could afford. There’s no way to ascertain responsibility/sustainability without first-hand inspection of the suppliers on their own turf.
Over two weeks, we visited 14 mills in 11 cities (locations) throughout Brazil and Bolivia. We knew some candidate species from my 15 years of making custom furniture, musical instruments and loudspeakers. But the scouting process was real and open-ended and one that paid dividends far into the future.
It’s pretty well known that the world has a resource depletion problem. By 1990 the outrage had taken two tracks. The Europeans claimed to boycott "bad actors" where the Orientals tried to verify "good actors". The Americans tended to pretend that everything was fine. Most of the real practices bore little resemblance to claims or published information, even "officially" documented and audited claims. Round wood at the source is little different from other extractive resources like oil, coal or diamonds - it’s quite dirty, getting progressively cleaned up on its way to the consumer.
But I could go to the source with Jungle Jim and shine a light on those layers of obfuscation. We took a mutual friend, a well-traveled, well spoken woman who could ask pointed questions in non-confrontational ways that were unavailable to us as guys in a very machist milieu.
Many of these mills were regular suppliers to Marwood with reputations for best practices. But under scrutiny, all the Brazilian sources fell apart regarding sustainable and ethical practices. Corruption reigns. The wood of choice firmed up as Pau Ferro, most often marketed as Santos Rosewood. It’s neither a true Rosewood nor from Santos, a port in southern Brazil a few thousands of miles from where it grows in Bolivia. That’s its point of export to the western markets.
Out travels led us to Bolivia where it grows. Santa Cruz is in the uplands between the Amazon Basin and the Andes. The area produces very good timber, which was comparatively quite responsibly harvested, primarily by Japanese mills exporting a range of raw veneer and lumber with semi and completely finished pieces and parts back to Japan. The picture grew much darker eastward into the backlands toward Brazil. Poachers, primarily German nationals, routinely carried out stealth logging raids, complete with pneumatic chainsaws, a convoy with a helicopter and machine guns. As a naive gringo, I would not have believed what I saw with my own eyes.
With Jim Martin’s Forestry Fund clout we were able to arrange a project of a life-time, working with the University of Santa Cruz and the Bolivian Forestry Department to create a long term sustainable yield program with the Chiquitano Native Peoples. The kingpin is that their tribal lands were secure. Of course they had titular property rights - that the poachers could ignore. But they could’t ignore large-expanse swamps with serious snakes, arachnids and reptiles, along with unimaginably agile canoeists armed with curare darts. A seriously secure site into the foreseeable future.
We need to jump over lots of wonderful details to say that we established a well managed, continuous-yield program that netted the Chiquitano natives a lion’s share of income, along with the best-of-class SUTO veneer mill for a long-term contract supplying Marwood, with Thiel consuming enough veneer to stabilize the whole program, which continued until Thiel was sold at the end of 2012.
The wood of interest goes by many names. Pau Ferro is the catch-all meaning Iron Wood, which applies to many tropical woods of similar type. Santos Rosewood is a lie, even though all the Danish Rosewood furniture since the 1960s has been made of this wood. It is in the same family as the Dalbergia genus rosewoods, but I felt it disingenuous to call it such. Complicating matters, there are two species, lowland and upland, that are all marketed together. So we coined two names. For the lowland species, I applied the local name of Morado which means ’purple’ in the local tongue. The upland species is lighter in color as well as less color-fast and bleaches toward blond. We named it Amberwood.
Because we were dealing directly with a responsible source and exporting via ship all the way to the Port of Louisville, 80 miles from Lexington, we kept the cost within reach and competitive with our local species. We went on to buy over a million square feet through that ongoing program. The offering was a hands-down success and our peers couldn’t believe that we could offer it at standard pricing.
As with many things in life, there’s more than meets the eye; it’s more than a pretty wood. I’ve only told the high points here. There’s a whole lot to love about Amberwood / Morado. I’m glad when people share that love.
