Business Ideas & Best Practices

In June of 2017, due to an unusually dry summer a devastating fire quickly spread engulfed the area around the village of Knysna, South Africa. The fire killed seven people and destroyed over 1,000 homes and businesses, leaving at least 10,000 citizens without a place to live. Daniel Hennessey, owner of Timber Village Furniture Manufacturers in Knysna, was among those affected by the fire.

In the East Coast region of Malaysia, in the State of Kelantan, just outside of the town of Kota Bharu, Mohd Nazmie lives with his family. He’s a schoolteacher. And he’s a woodworker and sawmiller. He salvages trees that otherwise would have been burned. He produces and sells live-edge furniture for friends and local clients. Thanks to a daring investment in an LT15 sawmill, he has opened up a whole niche industry to himself.

How the Philippines developed a plan to salvage illegally-logged timber that was left rotting after being apprehended by authorities, using the valuable timber to produce...

Guitars are Jorge Simons’ passion – the entire journey from selecting the standing Spanish cypress tree to seeing the final instrument in a musician’s capable hands. He runs the Madinter Factory, located just outside Madrid, which specializes not in actually building guitars themselves, but rather in supplying private and commercial guitar makers with all the tools and materials to build their own guitars.

In order to interview Mr. Hutter for the article and video, we packed all our video gear onto the train and began the ascent of Mount Rigi. Known as a ‘cogwheel’ train, the train rests on tracks like any other, but has an additional gear that attached to a cogged track between the two smooth ones. The gear locks into this cogged track, pulling the train up the unusually steep mountainside railway to the summit of Mount Rigi.

“The idea came from a trip through Norway and Iceland where my wife and I saw quite a few green roof structures on sheds and commercial buildings,” he said. “It triggered an idea that I wanted one at home.”

After 25 years working as a carpenter, John Price starting Smithfield Joinery in the year 2000, his son Leigh joining after his military service. Seven years ago, they implemented a woodland management plan for their acreage. They wanted the woodland to be able to work for itself – to be beautiful and useable at the same time. To do so required thinking about the future of the woodland, how it would be used, and how to maintain it.

Developed by missionary philanthropist John Enright, a co-op style honey initiative, is taking off in Zambia, and improving lives for the 10,000 individuals already involved.

After the Czech revolution in 1989, Václav Chara started his own company producing electrical cables and accessories, which quickly grew into a profitable company that continues to this day. But one day, when a nearby sawmill announced bankruptcy, Mr. Chara decided to buy it and invest in it.

Ever since his childhood, Maik Retz always felt at home in the forest. Growing up two hours west of Berlin in a rural farming and forestry area, he knew he wanted to make forestry his career. His father started a business producing firewood and fencing material more than 40 years ago, and Maik started working in the business in 1994. Maik now operates the business with his brother and one other employee.