From Farm to Floor, The Lifewood Story

How can you create something beautiful for life if you don't know where it came from? We only offer tree species where we know that we can certify the origin and it's completely sustainable. I grew up in the forest. When I was a young man I used to drop my school bag and I'd run off into the bush after school. And it still inspires me to this day when I go into the forest and I say, wow, this is beautiful. When you put our timber floors into your home, you're bringing a bit of that Australian bush feeling, that tranquility, that serenity, that beauty, and that energy, you're actually bringing it into your home. One of the first things I noticed when I was touring the timber mills and the timber industry was noticing just how much waste there is. So I said, well, Mark, how do you create a product that utilises everything that the timber mill produces, keeps the board long and wide and flat? And that was the design of the Lifewood Floorboard. Every single floor at Lifewood has money allocated to replanting of trees. And we trust an amazing organisation called Truian Trees to do that replanting for us. I've worked with them for a few years. They are fully on board with our values, they are very ethical and they guarantee high value of success in tree planting. When we talk about sustainability at Lifewood, we're not just referring to the origin of the tree. We're talking about the sustainability of the manufacturing process and who manufactures it. So we make sure we pay our suppliers well so that they can pay their staff well. And then in return, they're happy to make the product. So we want the people that are making Lifewood products to be happy. Lifewood is completely unique from basically everybody else. The way that it's made, who makes it, which country it's made in, people that work at Lifewood, the people that install the floor, the people that design the floors, the people that deliver that whole process, people who sell the floors, they have to have a heart, otherwise it doesn't work. It's just a commodity. And I didn't get into business to sell a commodity. I wanted to get into business to make a difference, to create something beautiful and to change people's lives. I can only do that if we really focus on the big time. One of the true beauties of Lifewood is its people. They handpick a lot of things, they handpick them for their values, their work ethic, but most importantly, we only want to work with people at Lifewood who actually cherish and respect the customer. The sacrifice that that customer has made to be able to shop with us and our infinite responsibility to deliver something amazing to them every single time. It's an absolute privilege to be invited into someone's home, which is their most sacred place, but then to be invited to create something of craft, to create something of beauty that is going to stay in their home forever, that's an extreme honour. We have to choose people to do that, that actually understand and respect that responsibility. Lifewood is truly an Australian icon in the support it gives to its farmers, to the origin of its founder, to the staff in its showrooms, the people installing the floor, to the timbers that it was originally designed upon, to the patent that it's received. You just can't replicate that, and that's why I do what I do, and I love it.