Marketing Steadies Western Red Cedar

Despite the burden of tariffs on imports into the U.S, western red cedar is holding its own, in part thanks to the Western Red Cedar Lumber Association's most ambitious marketing campaign.

"The ongoing softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the U.S. is having a major impact on the cedar business, even though the dispute is strictly about structural lumber," said outgoing chairman Doug Clitheroe, at WCRLA's recent annual meeting in Kelowna, B.C.

"Western cedar doesn't injure the U.S. market, but WRCLA's determined efforts to have it exempt from the 27Vo countervail duty being charged have been ignored," said Clitheroe, general sales manager of International Forest Products Limited's cedar group in Vancouver. "Consequently, we are losing market share to non-wood substitutes, which is why it's imperative to promote cedar's attributes."

In partnership with British Columbia's Forestry Innovation Investment, WRCLA is embarking on a $3.2 million promotion program for the year, according to Peter Lang, general manager of WRCLA in Vancouver.

Major components of WRCLA's marketing program include an extensive print advertising campaign at the builder and consumer level; a pointof-purchase signage program for retail outlets; a more prominent presence at trade shows, and an increased Internet presence through the development of new Web sites.

Now in the second year of a multiyear campaign intended to retain cedar's market share in the face of increasing competition from alternative products, an emphasis on the new real cedar brand has enabled members to tie this brand to their own products, said Lang.

One 28-year-old company devoted almost entirely to cedar, which has learned it must move into new markets to survive, is selling more outside North America, after moving into Europe and Asia. Harry Erksine, owner of Still Creek Forest Products Ltd., Coquitlam, B.C., believes the industry will have an opportunity to show people across the world what can be done with western red cedar when Vancouver stages the Olympic Winter Games in 2010-since more than 90Vo of wood structures in Whistler are made from western cedar.

"We've had an uphill battle all year but believe some of the new marketing and promotional work done by WRCLA has helped us hold our own," said Paul Zartman, cedar sales mgr. for OrePac Building Products in Oregon. OrePac has also prevailed by teaming with other businesses, such as Interfor, to promote cedar, and is in the process of developing its own marketing team for cedar, focusing on sidings and trimming fascia.

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