Growing up in the Northern California Bay Area, I was surrounded with redwood trees, and the lumber that was cut from those trees. We had coastal redwoods in our back-yard which I remember climbing. Those trees were young, maybe 50 years old but boy could I get up in them, 60 or more feet in the air, way above the houses. You could see a long way from up there.
Our fence was built with redwood 4×4, 2×4 and split pickets. Our siding was Redwood plywood with clear coat finish. We had redwood trim boards and finish lumber inside. We were surrounded with it and my dad was a forester who would take us on hikes in the woods.
When I was in high school a Lumber Company was making the news: Palco. They were the target of a hostile takeover by a Texas company called Maxam. My dad got the contract to value the timber, and shared with me the volumes. He predicted at current cutting rates VG Fine grain Redwood would run out in 20 years in commercial volumes. I went to College, and then into the lumber industry. By the late 80’s Maxam had doubled the volumes. My dad said: this won’t last for long, not enough timber.
He was right, but when Maxam sold the 7700 acre Headwaters acreage VG All Heart redwood production was over in volume. That left an opportunity for VG Western Red Cedar to move into the market, and the company I was working for had the perfect distribution arm KD Cedar in Hayward, Ca to deliver the replacement product. I ran KD Cedar with this in mind from 1992 to 1997 and found good success with companies like Beronio, Melrose, Van Arsdale, Channel and Truitt and White. Many of these companies stocked the Cedar right where the redwood used to be, it was a natural fit. Some still called it Red Wood: (Western) Red (Cedar) Wood.
When I went to work at Patrick in 1997, we exploited the strong supply relationships that Patrick had in BC Canada to leverage our Cedar business in California and worked for the next decade to expand the customer base. It the 2000’s we expanded the reach to Southern California where we found more success with companies who had been sold scant D/Btr Flat grain Cedar. They greatly preferred the VG full sawn stock.
My father is responsible for planting the seed for this concept to become reality, but my grandfather’s company TUMAC had the connections to make it happen. It’s now 2019, and while volumes of VG WRC are smaller than they were 20 years ago, the builders and architects in California still prefer to specify Cedar where Redwood was once the norm. Certainly there were others who recognized the opportunity, but Patrick enjoys a 50%+ market share since we were the first in and the most reputable.