Charles Ezell, songwriter and comic sage, once said: “I hate science fiction. I can’t enjoy a movie that takes place after I’m dead.” Indeed, it takes a brave soul to imagine a world without YOU in it. But thinking about the future should be a selfless act, unless one is planning on destroying it like Iron Man or George W. Bush.

Woodshanti is a worker-owned cooperative, building furniture and cabinetry using responsibly harvested lumber and natural finishes: and a glimmering hope in the deregulated capitalistic corporate landscape of the early (and hopefully late) 21st century. Let’s face it- one of the only freedoms we still possess in this country is how and where we spend our money. And buying responsibly is a great way to make a difference. We talked to Shawn at Woodshanti and fell in love with the place.

The Beginning:

Berry tells: “After a couple of months working a job for a company I was like wow this… sucks. How do people do this? If I do this for 30 years I’m gonna hate myself. I need to do something where I’m engaged and I’m creative. I thought well I could make furniture. So days later I saw an add for a woodshop that was hiring and training people to make furniture. Tom Clossey, our co-founder, was also working there.  After four months the guy we were working for was basically going bankrupt. He didn’t really know how to woodwork or run a business. But he had a little store selling furniture. So he said why don’t you guys run the shop and sell me the furniture? So we bought all his tools for about 3 grand on our credit cards.”

“That was at a smaller location, but that’s how we funded it. We said ‘hey, we don’t want to go get different jobs, that would suck.’ So that was the beginning of the co-op.”  The idea is that we are creating a company that we want to work at. The other thing that is really unique is that we are a worker owned cooperative. So all of our craftsmen actually own the company and sit on the board of directors. Our company mostly hires full time employees because as a rule we want to hire owners. We currently have seven craftsman on staff.”

The Mission:

Berry and Clossey envision more than their current space can hold. Berry explains, “This place is great--but really what we’d like to see is, our company, co-located with other artisans, light industry manufacturers, artist studios, retail space, organic café, community center, office space for non-profits. There’s a non-profit I run called The Urban Alliance for Sustainability (http://www.uas.coop). So that’s our vision; for urban alliance to create these convergence centers where economy, culture, and ecology come together in a harmonious arrangement that kind of cross pollinates and feeds on each other. So it would be solar powered or wind powered, we’d collect the water, we’d compost on site, grow our own vegetables, we’d have daycare for the kids. Someone would come to check out the furniture and find out about herbal medicine, you know what I mean.”

The sustainable products:

“The thing that we are really trying to promote is local salvaged wood like this table (see photo 1). This is Claro Walnut salvaged from walnut orchards here in California. The base is Bay Laurel, another native species. This wood just grows here naturally and the base wood is windfall, very ethical source, very green. The greenest thing you can do is local, right. You know, people are into bamboo but it comes from China, it has to get all the way here somehow.”
“Also, the dust collector system we use is pretty standard for the industry, but one thing unique about us is all the sawdust along with our scrap wood gets composted as part of the City Green Bin Program.”

How do you find the salvaged wood?

“There are guys out in the sticks, no pun intended, with farms and they hear about a tree falling and they realize it’s a valuable hardwood species and they cut it up. So there is kind of a network of folks that we use. Basically we are a custom manufacturer so we don’t have much inventory. When we get a project we source the wood from a smattering of individuals: see who has what, see if it’s going to work for the project go check it out. It’s not like a huge network but we know a handful of sources maybe a dozen guys who have saw mills out in their barns and they specialize in local salvage of hard woods.”

Is it all salvaged wood?

“No. Promoting wood salvage is really what’s kind of unique about our company, I don’t know any other company that’s really doing that. What we do that is more common, and that we do a larger volume in, is called FSC wood, that stands for Forrest Stuartship Council, and that’s an international body that stands for responsible forestry, similar to the organic foods industry. They set standards then third party agencies come in and audit the forests, saw mills, lumber-yards, factories and retailers. They have what’s called chain of custody, so the certified wood has to in every link of the chain be held by a certified entity.”

Tell us about the lacquer you use to seal the wood.

“That’s the second thing that really sets our company apart. We use hand rubbed natural oils, which nobody else in the industry is doing, except for those in Europe. It’s actually a German product. It’s not an old world throw back. It’s a hybrid linseed oil base, kind of an old world finish but made by a modern company with modern chemistry, that are making blends using materials from plants. So they’re scientifically advanced but it’s just not petrochemical base. It protects the woods and really brings out the color and the grain. We think that these finishes are by far the most beautiful things you can do for the wood, aside from being safe for our workers and the environment. You can also compost it because it only consists of plant matter.”

What product do you make most?

 “Cabinets. We do a lot of whole houses so we’ll do kitchens, office, closets vanities, shelves, living room entertainment centers. We would like to do more furniture, that’s something we have always been striving for. We would like to launch a furniture line.”

Can you explain Woodshanti’s ethic?

“This is our finishing room (photo 9). Walk into any other company’s finishing room and you would tear up and get a headache from the fumes because their chemicals are poisonous. Standard finishes are just plastic. We are trying to redefine craftsmanship to include ethics, like our sourcing of material, environmental sensitivity and the worker owned environment.”

“You see craftsmen all over who love working with wood, but hate their boss. Craftsmen are do-it-yourself kind of people so we think the worker co-op model is a great innovation. This is nothing new; indigenous people have been doing it forever until this corporate culture came in extracting profits from other people’s efforts.”

“A worker owned cooperative model is a model that can function in a capitalist society. We can make money for ourselves but do it democratically and with ethics. Not only is it more fulfilling as a worker –we hire quality workers who care more about the work their doing. They also become democratic citizens because they are living democracy at their workplace. Democracy is not just ‘I go to the pole once a year,’ democracy is learning every day how to listen to somebody and how to work with a diverse group of people.“

Attribute Magazine thanks Mr. Berry and those at Woodshanti for taking time from their busy schedule to give Kurt an interview and allow Robert to photograph their craftsmanship for us.

For more information please visit the Woodshanti website: www.woodshanti.com