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Taylor guitars buys ebony mill, pitches sustainable wood by 123wert sdfsf
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Taylor guitars buys ebony mill, pitches sustainable wood |
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Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
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Ebony and other exotic woods coveted for building musicalinstruments are also among the world's most endangered andprotected, a fact highlighted when federal agents raided GibsonGuitar Corp. factories in search of illegally imported materials. Southern California guitar impresario Bob Taylor thinks he has asolution: Buy an ebony mill. "We are living in a time when almost all of the wood species we usein guitars are stressed beyond belief," said Taylor, who co-foundedTaylor Guitars in 1974.
"It's almost like we have an obligation todo this." Taylor and longtime business partner Kurt Listug havepurchasedCameroon'slargest ebony mill for an undisclosed sum. Taylor is the guitar manufacturer's president and its designspecialist; Listug is chief executive and the financial specialist.They and a Spanish partner see more than just a businessopportunity, Taylor said — they're working to change howebony is harvested and processed. They're also taking on what may be an even more difficult task:convincing guitar buyers that variations in wood color, oftenperceived as flaws, are actually signs of sustainably harvestedebony. "The people of Cameroon can't afford the luxury for us to be this picky," the professorialTaylor urged customers in a video posted on the website of the ElCajon, Calif., guitar maker. "Let's embrace what the forest canoffer us right now." Ebony is the wood of preference for the fingerboards of guitars andother stringed instruments.
Once fairly widespread in the Americas,Africa and Asia, most mature ebony trees in India , Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Madagascar have been removed, according to Greenpeace , which blames the depletion on global demand from a variety ofindustries combined with poor forestry practices. The music business and other industries have joined Greenpeace overthe last several years in a campaign to protect forests and certifyenvironmentally responsible logging. Several types of premium woodare at risk around the world, the group says. In the case of ebony, for example, if a tree is cut down and if thewood isn't the deep black that customers prefer, "they just leaveit. To them, it's no good," said Scott Paul, who ran Greenpeace'sforest campaign for 14 years before leaving recently to take a jobat a biotech company where he is exploring alternative uses forbamboo.
Although environmentalists applaud Taylor Guitars' intentions inCameroon, Paul said, "there's a lot of skepticism that someone canjust come into a country and finally do it right." Importing wood has become more complicated since U.S. lawmakersvoted in 2008 to expand the decades-old Lacey Act to ban wood thatwas harvested or exported in violation of a foreign country's laws.The idea was to protect endangered forests as well as the U.S.forest products industry. That's the law that the Justice Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited in the Gibson Guitarraid last year and in 2009, seeking what they alleged wereillegally imported exotic woods — rosewood from India in thelatest case and ebony from Madagascar in the earlier raid.
Gibson has said that it didn't violate U.S. or foreign laws inimporting the wood and has mounted an aggressive campaign to clearits name, arguing that the Lacey Act is being unevenly applied tocomplex international tariff questions. Company executives say theywant federal officials to create a system to certify whetherimported wood complies with the act. For Taylor Guitars, which has used ebony from Cameroon for manyyears, the chance to ensure a steady supply of legal ebony was toogood to pass up, Taylor said in an interview. The company teamed late last year with Madrid firm Madinter Trade,which sells tone woods for musical instruments, to buy the Crelicammill outside of Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon.
The purchasewasn't officially announced until late last month. Taylor said it's been a difficult process bringing the mill's woodsourcing and operations up to what he and his partners consideracceptable. The mill's subcontractors, for example, typically cutdown 10 trees to find one with all black wood, Taylor said. Heagreed to boost their pay to get them to deliver that ebony thathad been considered undesirable.
"Acoustically, there is no difference," Taylor said. The manufacturer had to familiarize himself with Cameroon's complexlogging permit system and its complicated labor laws. And he setabout upgrading working conditions and salaries. "We had 75 employees who hadn't had a pay raise in 12 years,"Taylor said.
Obtaining more electrical power for the mill meant he had to buythe transformer, the poles and the power lines. "Then they will sell the power to us," Taylor said. "Now we arestarting some heavy capital investment." The mill currently processes large chunks of wood into boards, butTaylor has a vision of the mill producing parts that musicalinstrument makers and others, such as knife manufacturers, can usewith perhaps only a little further customization. That will requirenew machinery and training, he said. "We are going to start doing a lot of the processing and that willprovide more jobs and more higher-paying jobs and triple the valueof what they can sell, instead of just the raw material," Taylorsaid.
"There is money in the ebony, and they deserve to have moreof that." ron.white@latimes.com. I am Home Supplies writer, reports some information about xl twin sheet , iron horse leather.
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