In-Person or Online Via Zoom | 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM | $129 Per Attendee

When you hear the word COVID, do you think about how your business will need to change? What do you need to do differently to “Re-engage” back with your customers or to generate more sales post-COVID?

Many companies have been forced to make drastic changes to their operations. The way you communicated with customers and prospects or generated sales in the past may not be effective in the new reality.

In this interactive training session, we will give you some tips and tactics on how you can refine and, in some cases, redefine how you will interact with your customers and prospects as well as grow your sales. You will learn how to create a post COVID prospecting sales plan that will contain a mix of activities appropriate for your business and market.

We will focus on the following areas:

General Assessments are a free, confidential conversation with BC Wood that will help identify the specific areas limiting your company’s growth. Typically, there are three general areas of concern for most value-added wood manufacturers: Marketing and/or Business Development, Technical Expertise, or Product Development and Design.

For now, all assessments are done virtually, but once it is safe to travel, we would be happy to meet you at your place of business! Please contact Kit Crowe at kcrowe@bcwood.com to arrange your general assessment.

Website: cawp.ubc.ca/training

Email: cawp@cawp.ubc.ca

While CAWP has led tours to Europe for more than a decade, the 2021 event summoned forest sector and construction professionals, specifiers, and researchers to tour leaders in mass timber components and prefabricated building systems across the Province. As Jason Chiu, Managing Director of CAWP and tour organizer, enthusiastically remarked to the group: “We don’t need to travel elsewhere to see mass timber and prefabrication in action. Everything can be experienced in our own backyard in BC”.

Demand for engineered wood products continues to spike, undisrupted by pandemic events and record-high lumber prices. In 2020, the global market for cross laminated timber (CLT) alone exceeded US$1 Billion, a value that is expected to triple by 2027. While Europe still accounts for the majority of CLT output volume and production capacity, North America is quickly catching up – and that’s good news for the economy and the environment! The tour showcased how BC-timber building companies push the envelope in manufacturing and design to support the shift toward greater speed, efficiency, cost-savings, and much needed carbon emission reductions in construction.

The campaign will be an emotional pitch to feel good about sourcing value-added wood products from our own backyard – for sustainability benefits, economic benefits, support for local businesses, a healthier lifestyle, beautiful aesthetics, and to be on the good side of climate change. This brand-new series will run for 3-months, starting the new year off strong from January, across social media platforms featuring interviews with manufacturers, their products, projects, and facilities.

Kit Crowe | kcrowe@bcwood.com.

BC Wood will be organizing industry participation at the WRLA Building & Hardware Showcase at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg, on January 19 – 21, 2022.

The WRLA Building & Hardware Showcase is one of the largest gatherings of the lumber and building materials industry in Canada, bringing together the industry's top decision-makers and opinion leaders. The show provides networking opportunities where exhibitors and suppliers can get their products in front of a diverse range of buyers in the industry to develop new markets, generate sales leads, and gain national exposure.

Exhibition space is limited, so for more information regarding participation at the WRLA Building & Hardware Showcase in BC Wood's pavilion, please contact Kit Crowe at kcrowe@bcwood.com.

From January – March 2022, this online activity will provide market intelligence and mentoring to BC companies, prepare some sales tools, and then arrange on-line business-to-business meetings with pre-qualified potential partners primarily in Mexico, including Importers, Distributors, Architects, Builders, Developers, and Manufacturers.

For more information contact: Ken Hori E: khori@bcwood.com

BC Wood member cost: $2,195 + HST (application deadline December 8, 2021)

For more information contact: Ken Hori E: khori@bcwood.com  

Dave Farley | dfarley@bcwood.com

BC Wood and member companies participated in the NAWLA Traders Market, live and in-person for the first time in over 20 months. The “annual” event, except for last year, took place in Louisville Kentucky, the birthplace of bourbon, KFC and Mohammed Ali. Given that it was my first time traveling into the US in a very long time, it was also an amazingly difficult place to get to - taking a little under 12 hours to get from Vancouver to Louisville.

Now onto the main event. The folks at NAWLA informed me that they had almost 800 people registered and by mid-day Friday, 720 people participated in the event. That is impressive and a lot more than any of the BC manufacturers were expecting. The traders floor was busy, not to the level of previous years, but busy enough that manufacturers got to meet with some important US distributors. As one BC manufacturer commented,” I actually had time to have valuable conversations, face to face, with people I haven’t seen in almost two years”. The interest in getting together was probably best experienced at the NAWLA opening reception, which was well attended. I will admit, it was somewhat disconcerting being in a ballroom full of people, all shaking hands and chatting away.

In the end, I was pleasantly surprised with the NAWLA event. It brought a relative sense of the “return to normalcy” for business and gave the impression that the difficult times of the pandemic are behind us. Don’t get me wrong, travel is still not easy, especially with the negative PCR COVID tests needed to return to Canada, but that’s another story. It did feel good to meet directly with people again, and with all the exciting market development activities that we have scheduled in the next 6 months, I encourage you to reach out and see if they are a fit for your company. As always, I can be reached at dfarley@bcwood.com or on my cell at 604-728-8786.

Jim Ivanoff | ivanoff@bcwood.jp

Unfortunately, after the big increase in cases during the Olympics, the Japanese government has been reluctant to reopen the borders. This is particularly true as the governing party did not want to risk another spike in the lead-up to the election at the end of October. However, Japanese businesses and foreign chambers of commerce have been pressuring the government to relax the border controls as both tourism and international trade have been stifled.

Intelligent City, the sister company to Vancouver architecture firm LWPAC, has begun building net-zero, mass timber urban housing projects in a newly opened factory on River Road in North Delta, British Columbia.