Contact:  Chris Krauss
Phone: (207) 645-2241
Email: mewood@beeline-online.net

Vision : Maine’s Western Mountains have a healthy local forest products industry and forest ecosystem. Its communities celebrate the creation of wood products within an environment that encourages the conservation of natural resources and values the spiritual, cultural, and community life of the region.

Mission : Maine WoodNet's mission is to facilitate cooperative manufacturing, innovating marketing, and wood-use efficiency by forest based businesses, while promoting networking and educational opportunities focused on improved forest stewardship.

Overview: Maine WoodNet is a marketing and manufacturing network comprised of over 50 wood products businesses located in the “western lakes and mountains” region of Maine. It puts into practice ideas for improving the health and sustainability of forest-based businesses initially conceived in Wilderness Society research completed in 1994. By helping its members work together to make and market wood products, to build business and woodworking capacity, and to better connect fine craftsmanship with good forestry, Maine WoodNet is helping small businesses in this region compete and thrive in an increasingly global market for furniture and other forest products.

Through its successes, Maine WoodNet demonstrates what The Wilderness Society postulated in 1994, that “it’s not how many logs that come out of the forest that’s important…its how many dollars come out of the logs.” Greater “wood-use efficiency” – that is, getting more products and dollars from the same or less timber volume – means more space on the land and in the economy for wildland conservation.

Maine WoodNet pursues this goal by:

• facilitating member-to-member collaboration – enabling members to improve products design, better utilize surplus and scrap wood, and produce joint products;
• providing marketing assistance – helping members position their products to the greatest advantage in the marketplace;
• providing or facilitating technical assistance – connecting members with training and information they can use to improve their products and business management;
• organizing members’ participation in tradeshows and events – helping members increase access to wholesale and retail buyers and the public;
• creating opportunities using forest products certification – developing and implementing a “group chain of custody” certification under the Forest Stewardship Council system;
• creating opportunities for retail merchandising – launching SugarWood Gallery, Inc. as a venue for showcasing and selling members’ products and educating the public about forest/community interactions.