Little devil

Knowhow: If you’re looking to buy from ASH at Heyfield, Ben Bould and Belinda Bertram can help.

photographs daniel pederson

Quality: ASH innovation and strategy manager Brett Bould talks with Trevor Brown as he looks at the latest offerings in the shed.

ASH retail outlet brings customers

By DANIEL PEDERSON

DEMAND sparked Australian Sustainable Hardwood’s foray into retail sales at Heyfield. Locals kept phoning the Heyfield timber mill, looking for a bit of this or that, wanting to deal directly with the biggest business in town. And biggest it is; the mill now employs 170 people, hailing from as far afield as Sale, Traralgon and Churchill, to Bairnsdale, Boisdale and Briagolong. But timber mills generally sell large commercial orders, not small lots. ASH sales and logistics manager Brett Bould, occasionally harried by the constant requests, a few years ago reckoned there might be an opportunity for customers and the mill alike “but we just weren’t set up for it”. Then, in 2018, ASH began setting out offcuts and odd lots and letting people buy what was there once a month, on a Saturday. When you’re thinking about offcuts from a sawmill that creates laminated beams, think potentially heavy. On the shop floor there’s a 2.5-metre garden bench the team estimates would weigh between 350 and 400 kilograms. And so it took much of a day to lay out what would have otherwise become waste and another day to store what wasn’t sold. Such was the popularity of the monthly sales, the company soon sought a shed to house what fast became a bourgeoning retail business. “We just got busier and busier,” said Belinda Bertram, now ASH’s retail manager and a mill employee for 10 years. In February 2020 a new retail centre opened, housed in a massive shed - 60 metres by 26 metres - catering for both professionals and the do-it-yourself fraternity. Then a month later came the start of COVID lockdowns. “Everyone became a DIYer during COVID,” she said, “and we stayed open - well most of the time - because we’re considered an essential service. It was a boom time for us.” With people working from home, there came a rapid demand for desks. Belinda, quick off the mark, made kits so people could come in, pick up a pack and make their own desk at home. Now, apparently with the worst of COVID having passed us by, people come in and browse for hours, looking for the ideal piece of timber for their project, from rough sawn to finished panels. “We don’t rush people out,” said Belinda. The show has advanced from catering for local demand; word has got around and now it’s quite common to have Melbourne-based cabinet or furniture makers and carpenters picking through the range. Moe’s Ray Mitchell came across ASH while searching to buy Australian timbers on the internet; he was particularly seeking timber capable of enduring a scroll saw. Ray compares the process with using a sewing machine. “And I don’t know the timber term, but you don’t want too many furry bits when you cut it, that means less time for me sanding,” he said. Ray is retired and said the scroll saw was a good hobby for retired, creative people because the saws aren’t expensive when compared with the gear needed to make furniture. He got into the work when his grandchildren started arriving; there’s 10 of them now and he’s now graduated to passing on simple jigsaws and toys to his seven great-grandchildren. “I make fairly simple jigsaws, for little kids. I’m working on one at the moment of Dino the Dinosaur made from oak,” he said. Trevor Brown, from Cowwarr, is poking around in the background as Brett’s son Ben Bould - a mill employee for three years - prepares a load of desktops for architects Ola of Melbourne. Trevor, who lives across the road from Brett, makes furniture because he says it’s therapeutic and he’s endured a fair battle with cancer. “You know this really is the only place where you can buy decent hardwood,” he said “You just can’t buy timber this good elsewhere”. And the price? Some furniture-grade timber retails for $4 per linear metre.