Red Hot Redwood

"The redwood business has picked up a lot. lt picked up on uppers about six months ago, Recently some of the lower grades have started to move. lt's the old supply and demand thing; production is down, many mills are low or out of logs, so they switched over to Doug fir. With all that good weather, we had a big, big month in December, and normally business is tailing off by the middle of November. lt should go pretty strong for the next few monlhs."

wood deck contest, co-sponsored by Today's Homeowner magazine (one million circulation). Dealers can cash in on the deck building excitement this will create by displaying free entry blanks and banners.

CRA's web site at www.calredwood.org is also a great sales aid. The site contains sections for consumers, specifiers, dealers and resource information. It has been

Redwood is the

nation's fastest growing commercial softwood. drawing substantial traffic, approximately 300 visitors per day who look at an average offive pages per visit.

CRA is also continuously creating, updating and refining its library of almost 50 booklets, videos and other sales support materials. In progress is a series of six new construction tip sheets showing simple plans for projects such as decks, trellises, gazebos, benches and planters. These inexpensive pieces make great point-of-purchase giveaways. Also in the works for 1999 are a series of new ad slicks-simple drawings and headlines that are useful for dealer ads and brochures.

"The redwood market is very good, I think the reason is because of Eel River and G-P being otf redwood until after the fhst of the year. It's also a better redwood market because of better than expected weather, so people are using more product than in the past. Prices are very high, I think it will last through March, probably through April."

"The supply of upper items, old growth, is very limited. Sscond growth, sidings, rustic grades are available and demand has increased slightly, but pretty well along same proportion as everything else."

"Decking items are still very strong, as a result of the strong local maf ket. People down here (Southern California) having been using redwood for a long time and it's difficult to get them to switch. We tried stocking composites, treated 2x6, even even a beautiful cedar decking product, but they didn't move. They want redwood because 0f their familiarity with it, especially upper grades, the B grades, yr/hich are getting difficult to find. $o the price keeps edging up, but customers are willing to Bay it. They want it and they want it now.'