Redwood Reglon lllghllghts for 1956

(special

to The CALIFoRNIA LUMBER MERCHANT)

Although production figures for 1956 were not available at press time, here is a "studied analysis" of the situation by Louis Ehling of the California Redwood Association: (these figures are for the twenty mills reporting to the CRA) wood has been the work of the Promotion division in a planned campaign to promote the use of "Garden Redwood from California" in adding outdoor living to the existing interior residential and commercial structure. This campaign will be continued throughout 1957.

If there are no great changes in the redwood industry, the year 1957 promises to be as good, if not better, than 1956. Of particular interest to the retailer of California red- orized agent of the American Tree Farm System in the Redwood Region.

The increased interest in the low maintenance cost of the natural effect gained through the use of weathered red. wood exteriors has led to special studies by the Research and Technical division and the end result is a new data sheet, in color, describing how to achieve this effect. A new supplement to the "Exterior Finish" redwood data sheet includes an outline map showing the eight localities throughout the United States where finish systems are weather-tested to meet the minimum durability requirements established for listing by the California Redwood Association.

Now I want to go back a bit to the promotional aspects of our work and give you a few concrete examples of the way in which the Redwood Association helps sales of redwood products all over the country. If you look in the current issue of "House & Garden" magazine, you will find their annual presentation of the "House & Garden" merchandising colors. Every time this group of colors comes out, there are a host of products ranging from house paints through colored telephones to refrigerators, wall papers, drapery and upholstery materials, all of which are immediately made available to purchasers through cooperating stores in every part of the United States. A great deal of work obviously precedes the public announcement, in order to coordinate these colors with so many manufacturers. For the first time in the history of this coordinated color promotion, this year's group includes a color of a natural material, and that material is redwood.

You will frequently pick up magazines in the shelter field and find redwood houses, redwood furniture, redwood gardens and other things made of redwood written about or pictured. I can assure you that it is no accident that there has been so much mention of redwood in these publications. There is an equally continuous flow of such information through magazines in the architectural, interior decoration, and landscaping fields. Just exactly how many pages of such publicity appear each year is a bit of a trade secret, but I will tell you that any year in which the actual space value of that publicity drops below a million dollars,

r'The Best-lqid 'Plonst "

In a big batch of requests for literature that came in the California Redwood Association's mail recently was a coupon asking for a copy of "Redwood Home Plans by California Architects." Bob Romero, u'ho has handled all Association mailings for several years and is usually as imperturbable as a grape about any request, ran knowledgeably through his index of about a hundred or more literature titles. He found nothing by that name; was sure from the start, he said, that no such title exists in today's files.

Old files and long-time employes, hower.er, confirmed the former distribution of plans but no trace could be found of the publication from u'hich the coupon had been clipped. Yet there it was. mailed a couple of days before from Oakland, stating in perfectly plain print, "Please send me, etc."

Regretting inability to fill the request, in replying the Association also asked the sender for information about the source of the coupon. Back came a prompt answer. "I had an idea," the correspondent rn-rote, "that f might get a 'rise' out of someone when I sent that request. I am pleased to send you hereu'ith the book of plans in which your company's advertisement appeared-dated, incidentally, just ?J years ago."

The book of plans, titled "Distinctive Homes, 1927 Edition," was issued by the Lumbermen's Service Association. Its contents were "100 plans frorn r,vhich to choose," an editorial on the value of permanent home ownership, and advertisements of a nurnber of lumber and wood products manufacturers. There is no record of any other recent requests for "Redwood Homes By California Architects." In any case, it's doubtful whether today's home builders vi'ould get much satisfaction lrom 1927 plans.

I am going to be very much worried indeed. Right now it's comfortably above the million dollar mark for 1956, and has been each year for quite a number of years back. Another example-at the Furniture Mart which will take place in Chicago starting October 15th there will be presented the lines of furniture which will appear in the stores from February through the summer of 1957. At that time two lines of furniture will be announced r,vhich will be of redwood and both of strikingly nerv and fresh design-not the old sawbuck tables and benches which have grown to be all too familiar. One will be presented by the largest manufacturer of summer furniture in the United States and the other will be presented by.the most exclusive manufacturer of garden furniture (in this case the word exclusive means "high-priced," since the materials which will be used in this line are cast bronze and redwood).

Another item-a few weeks ago the San Francisco Museum of Art opened a new landscape exhibit. An interested crowd of nearly 400 people attended the opening and the exhibit has received many favorable mentions, in both newspapers and professional journals since. When it finishes its San Francisco showing, it will join a similar exhibit, the subject of which is San Francisco Bay Anchitec- ture, on tour through art galleries all over the country. fn each case the show will be sponsored by local landscape architects, just as the architectural exhibit is sponsored by architects. It will be no surprise to you to know that all of the gardens pictured employ a great deal of redwood in their construction, for the show is just one part of a larger campaign on garden redwood which we expect to continue for several years.

The garden redwood theme is specifically designed to increase the demand for the common grades of redwood, some of the material which in an earlier day was left in the woods and not even brought in to the mill.

We expect the garden redwood theme to be as important in its way as the natural finish theme which started in 1940 has been, in its effect upon our siding sales.

That, incidentally, was a long, tough struggle about which you may not know. Briefly, the situation in the thirtys was this: The redwod market was tremendously slow. The sales that were made were principally bridge timbers, tank stock, or even end-grain flooring blocks, and occasionally some siding. Shingles were also a sizable factor in our production. f remember the rejoicing in the industry when an open pit silo took a little over a million feet of all-heart stock. When redwood did appear on a house, it was usually only on a gable end, and even then it was painted white.

Little by little, we developed the market strategy of abandoning the white-painted New England farm house and instead aligning ourselves with a group of obscure, young architects around the Bay area who wanted to build a new kind of house where the materials themselves showed through in natural texture and color, and thus became the decoration. fn short, they used as little paint as possible. At that time these architects were practically unknown. Today they are the revered originators of a whole new architectural concept. As their architectural ideas gained national acceptance, redwood became inextricably identified with contemporary architecture. This, coupled with the philosophy that no home owner would pay a premium price for a product he could not see, helped us in the inauguration of a vogue of the clear-finished, redwood-sided house which has played so important a part in the business bf the redwood mills since 1945.

This one concept eventually revolutionized the place redwood holds in relation to thc rest of the lumber industry, made it the Rolls Royce of softwood lumber species.

As I say, we will continue the promotion of redwood specialty items, like siding, but we expect through the Garden Redwood promotion to achieve a similarly successful market for the common grades.

Of course, one basic thought underlies a lot of our work. 'Redwood, at best, can only produce about 2/o of the American softwood volume. Obviously, the Redwood Association can't publish as many Data Sheets or booklets as some of the larger units in the industry. .We can't publish as many advertisements in the magazines. We can't field as many men or call as many specifiers as some of the big fellows. Eventually, if we confine ourselves to doing just the same things they do, we are going to lose out to their competition. High production costs will eventually get us.

But we try to make a virtue out of our relatively small size. I can remember that after Tris Speaker had led both leagues in batting average for his second season, a reporter finally cornered him and asked how he did it. What was the secret of his success ? Speaker's answer is a pretty good merchandising guide. He said, "Son, f just hit 'em where they ain't."

. And that's what we try to do. That's why we have highly specialized little publications such as "Redwood News." That's why we had redwood exhibits in art galleries. That's why we try to identify redwood in the public mind-only with the latest design and the most fashionable uses. The goal, of course, is to keep redwood moving into select and profitable markets, and have it move continuously, without regard to the general lumber market. Its goal is that now and later, even when redwood lumber production sinks to the level it can maintain permanently, that the specialized markets it serves will assure the prosperity of the people of the Redwood Region.

I want to go back now to the early days of the redwood industry. Picture, if you will, a thin, stretched-out industry linked to the outside world only by schooners which plied' one of the most treacherous waterways in the world. There was no ready-built market for redlvood. It was an alien wood, strange in appearance, with a peculiar softness that made people doubt its value. Indeed, its use in building our coastal cities during the era of the gold rush was based

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