Disaster for Opportunity

Anita - some investors here in Colorado are re-purposing a currently closed fiberboard plant into a wood pellet mill that will grind the too-small pine beetle-killed trees into stove pellets.  Not necessarily the artistic / creative approach to available lumber, but certainly low-cost raw material.  Here's a link to an article from earlier this year, as well as a more recent one.

Make sure whatever you’re creating that it fits well with the demographic and psychographic profile of a target market that enjoys something a little different, unique, wants something that no on else has. Consider organizing your business development time around the 7 Centers of Management Attention. Start first with Marketing, do some research about target markets that would be attracted to this unique wood. Then consider what systems you would need in Client Fulfillment, Lead Conversion and then Lead Generation.Try it in that order.

This method might be different from what your instinct is telling you to do but trust the E-Myth model.First set up the strategy before producing something that you’re not crystal clear about what you’re promising. I hope this helps and keep us posted as to what you’re going to do.

Carrie

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.  As a former home & garden editor for a newspaper, I am picturing a line of blue-tinged or blue-veined furniture -- very distinctive, called ... Blueberry Bower?  With matching and contrasting cushions, draperies, throw pillows.

If the wood's not furniture-grade, then a line of decorative bowls, plant stands, candlesticks, knick-knack shelves, polished balls, etc.

To market it, you can take this tack:  "Sometimes nature has a trick up her sleeve. The secret of this distinctive blue wood is a small beetle that causes a change in the color of the wood and then moves on [assuming this is true].  The wood is strong -- you can let your 300-pound Uncle Herbert lounge on this settee and breathe easy. Furniture to last."

Get prototypes into furniture and home & garden shows; send brochures to home & garden writers at magazines and newspapers; try to interest catalog companies in the line (they often are the first to show unusual items).  Good luck!