All photo credits @conteska
I know as much about wood as I do about gardening, and that’s not much. That is until I flew across the world to Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand, and spent a week surrounded by wood in all its forms. I am here with Shimon, Artemano’s co-founder and Gaby, head of merchandising, on a buying trip and I have no idea what to expect, other than lots of wood.
The first supplier we visited was a round-faced man whose business is run from the middle of the forest, where he has constructed his open-air empire, 3 hours from where we’re staying. T. speaks not one word of English and giggles whenever he’s asked questions like: “when will our shipment be ready?” “Nearly, nearly”, he answers, giggling.
This is one of the hardest suppliers to communicate with, and yet he has the best wood supply around. It doesn’t help that we had to rely on a translator to explain that not only were we waiting for previous shipments of wood, but we are here to increase the number of shipments per month. Because Artemano is growing, and it is trying to help its suppliers grow as well.
The problem isn’t getting enough wood – it’s getting the supplier to dry it well and fast enough to ship it. Moist wood doesn’t do well in Canada: just like your skin, it dries and cracks when faced with winter heating systems. But how could we resolve this?
We spent 4 hours walking through fields – the kind that GPS can’t find – surrounded by massive logs of suar wood that dwarfed not just us, but the van we arrived in. I’ve never seen logs on that scale – they come from plantations, from farmers who don’t want the wood but only the shellac made by the beetles that feed off it, and from the government, who calls our supplier whenever it wants a field cleared for housing or development.
It was magnificent – a horizontal forest of grain and bark.
It was so hot that I thought my camera would melt. So hot that if I’d laid out a roll of cookie dough, it would have baked within 20 minutes. So hot that I thought: why do Shimon and Gaby put themselves through this, why not just hire someone to choose the wood for them?
But they inspected each and every log in each and every field, and eventually they chose 17 logs that will become Artemano coffee tables, dining room tables and consoles.
We celebrated with T. and his team by driving to a nearby restaurant (actually a tarp in the middle of a rice field), where we shared the most memorable meal of my trip: deep-fried “jumping chicken” (frog’s legs), fried eels, and chicken foot soup. “You eat! Foot is very tender!” said Bai, waving a ladleful of soggy chicken feet at us (yes, I like to go off the beaten track and love anything that doesn’t exist on Trip Advisor, but I draw the line at chicken feet).
I looked around the table. Everyone was communicating through gestures and laughter, and the discomfort that was there earlier was gone. Those hours spent together melted our communication differences away, and new deals were made – the two companies will grow together.
Now I understand what Shimon had told me earlier: the reason the Artemano team flies across the globe every three months is not just to choose the best wood for their business, but also to see their suppliers in person, “because you can’t create relationships without eye to eye contact”.
I am beginning to understand the Artemano magic: it exists in those moments when tension turns into connection, and miscommunication turns into collaboration. And maybe, just maybe those moments exist in the grain of the coffee table that you will fall in love with and take home with you.