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| Vermont gets grant to push wood August 5, 2005 By Gordon Dritschilo Rutland Herald |
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CLARENDON — Vermont's future just might be made of wood. Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., joined a number of state and federal officials Wednesday to announce a $1 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Agency to the Vermont Council on Rural Development. The money will be spent on marketing for Vermont wood products. "Vermont's forests and Vermont's craftsmen are the best in the nation," Jeffords said. "We all know that. It's time other people know that. I look forward to the day when Vermont wood products carry the same reputation as Vermont maple syrup." The announcement was made at Knight Kitchens at the Airport Industrial Complex, one of the businesses expected to benefit from the grant. Knight Kitchens makes custom cabinet and wooden kitchen facings. Owner George Ritter said his company markets directly rather than working through a distributor. "We do home shows," Ritter said. "This fall we'll do shows at the Long Island Convention Center, the Meadowlands in New Jersey, those are big areas for us. It's taken years to build a name and a reputation. We spend about 1 percent of our budget on advertising and it works." Paul Costello from the Vermont Council on Rural Development said the state hopes to use the grant to help Knight Kitchens expand its market penetration and help other companies to duplicate Knight's suc-cess. Participating in major trade shows like the ones Ritter mentioned are part of the strategy. The place to be is High Point, N.C., Costello said. "Places like that are the places where the buyers go," he said. "If we believe in the future of manufacturing, we've got to have national lines for sale." Costello said the funds would help manufacturers get their products to such shows, establish trade shows and design competitions in Vermont and other marketing techniques designed to promote the "Vermont brand" and increase the industries visibility. Building up the forest products business in Vermont would be good not just for the economy, but also for the environment, he said. "We all love the Vermont landscape," he said. "We're not going to preserve the Vermont landscape by fiat and we're not going to preserve it by buying it. We're going to preserve it by creating an economy that preserves it. We've got to provide an economic basis for land to stay in production." Costello said the greatest danger to Vermont's forests is not clear-cutting or herbicides. "It's parcelization," he said. "The land is valued as much for building homes as it is for cutting." |
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