Many furniture manufacturers in Australia in the last ten years or so have thrown in the towel. The reasons for this are many and many of those reasons are political.
However the biggest reason for most is that they simply cannot compete with the huge volume of imported furniture flooding the Australian market in the last decade especially. People are not bothering to get their lounges re-upholstered any longer, they can buy a new one for the same price or even less.
Many people have come into our store in recent times and have asked how we can possibly compete with all the cheap Chinese imports these days and my answer to them is that we don't.
We source most of our raw material from the surrounding landscape from old dead eucalyptus trees that have fallen naturally in wind storms. We use timbers that have had a previous life in a building somewhere, in some cases the building was originally constructed well over 100 years ago. This ensures us that every piece to be made will be a challenge in some way, the timbers are enormously varied. We will manufacture to order, we carefully select the timbers to be used and we then carefully arrange the timbers to be glued up in a way that enhances the piece being created. We work with the natural features in the wood, we don't avoid them.
All of this means that we have a very strong connection with the Australian landscape, we are inherently 'Australian'. The product we offer is a unique product, it has been hand crafted by one man, it represents the passion we have for what we do, it's an item that will be treasured in families for generations, it's furniture that has soul and a story attached.
Chinese imports can't possibly compete with that.