Who we are
BC Wood is a not-for-profit trade association that has represented British Columbia’s value-added wood products industry for 30 years. It is an industry-led association with a membership base of 120 wood products manufacturers and a board of directors that represents every value-added sector in every region of the province.
BC Wood envisions a growing and prosperous value-added wood products industry in BC that will ultimately surpass the primary forest sector in jobs, sales and investments made. To achieve this vision, BC Wood understands that it’s policies and procedures must reflect the priorities of all its’ stakeholders including employees, members communities, Indigenous peoples, customers, shareholders and government partners. An increasingly important theme in those stakeholder priorities is the support for furthering diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace.
Established in 1989 as a partnership between industry and government, BC Wood provides marketing programs to registered value-added manufacturers, which includes cost-shared participation in international tradeshows and events, out-going and incoming trade missions, lead generation, and networking opportunities. In addition, BC Wood members have access to an extensive resource library, both on-line and in our office.
BC Wood’s mandate is to assist BC’s secondary wood product manufacturers to grow faster by helping them access and exploit markets they would not otherwise enter. By diversifying the members’ market activities, the dollar value of BC fibre is maximized while the business risk is minimized.
BC Wood member companies produce hundreds of different value-added wood products grouped in to the following seven sectors:
- Millwork
- Cabinets
- Furniture
- Prebuilt Housing
- Engineered Wood Products
- Log Home and Timber Frame
- Remanufactured Wood Products
These seven product-based sectors represent the diverse range of specialty products and manufacturers in BC’s export wood markets. Industry sector advisory committees encourage sector collaboration to better target and deliver services more effectively. The marketing activity BC Wood carries out encourages manufacturers of BC’s specialty wood products to innovate, change, grow and compete more effectively by responding to changing markets.
BC Wood’s programs depend on a wide range of expertise provided by their Vancouver based sector specialists and their in-market specialties located in the United States, China, South Korea and Japan. The areas of expertise include:
- Providing timely market intelligence information
- Developing and implementing company specific marketing strategies
- Evaluating new product and market opportunities
- Delivering sector based trade promotion programs
- Developing and consumer testing new products
- Providing company specific coaching on entrepreneurship and marketing
BC Wood plays a major role in accelerating the ongoing growth of the value-added wood products industry by addressing a key limitation to growth: market intelligence and access to markets. To do this, BC Wood (in collaboration with its partners including the provincial government, the federal government and other government agencies and organizations) networks and connects BC’s secondary wood manufacturers with global buyers of our specialty wood products.
BC Wood staff annually organizes and participates in as many as 24 cost-shared tradeshows and events around the world. BC Wood has a 25-year track record of providing services to the value-added industry with an outstanding level of customer satisfaction. Programs are universal in nature and are open to all companies in the value-added industry on a cost shared basis.