Ties That Bind

AsiaRain recycles tropical wood castoffs from the Thai railroad

written by Glen Martin, as appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, February 19, 2002

Don Banducci freely acknowledges he spent many years as a bum.

Qualify that: kayak bum. While not necessarily contributing much to the gross national product, Banducci did manage to avoid welfare, eking out a living as a river guide and white-water kayak instructor.

All that was more than 20 years ago, however. Following those carefree salad days, Banducci became the roof rack king of America, then dropped out for extended R&R -- mainly hunting and fishing. Now he's back at the workaday grind, hawking salvaged exotic hardwoods.

As a white-water bum, Banducci helped usher in kayaking's golden age. During the late 1970s and 1980s, a handful of boaters established first descents on hair-raising rivers throughout the West, including the Stikine River in British Columbia and Wooley Creek in California's Marble Mountains.

Banducci was among that crew, which also included fellow Californians Lars Holbeck and Chuck Stanley. They were aided in their exploits by a new generation of heavy-duty plastic kayaks, which could withstand collisions with submerged rocks without fragmenting, a common problem with the fiberglass boats of the period.

But early in their white-water quests, Banducci and his buddies ran into a problem. Virtually all plastic boats of that time were fitted with foot braces fabricated by Yakima Products, a tiny firm situated in the eastern Washington town of the same name.

By 1979, Yakima was going belly up. And no Yakima meant no foot braces. No foot braces, no kayaking. So Banducci; his wife, Maggie; and two other partners bought Yakima for $50,000, comforted by the notion that their feet would never lack braces when the time came for a combat white-water roll.

ROOF RACKS TAKE OFF

Fast forward 15 years. Banducci and company have transformed Yakima from an industrial microbe with $25,000 in annual foot brace sales to an outdoor equipment behemoth.

By the 1990s, Yakima had become the country's leading manufacturer of car roof racks, selling $25 million in gear each year. The time and market seemed right by 1994: The partners sold out to San Francisco's Kransco for $20 million.

"But if I had it to do over again, I'd have hung on," mused Banducci on a recent afternoon as he contemplated the view from his rustic woodland home in the hills above Arcata. "The company was recently resold to WaterMark Group for more than $90 million. I think about that and I sometimes grit my teeth a bit, but then I just suck it up."

Banducci and his wife together got about $6 million paid out over four years from the Kransco sale. They later divorced. Banducci sunk a significant portion of his share into his house, some bad investments, lots of hunting and fishing trips -- and whatever else struck his fancy. Among his friends, the ebullient and spontaneous outdoorsman is not particularly known for abnegation.

"It got to the point that I could see I was going to need some additional income," he said. "Plus, Maggie and I have two kids. I didn't want them to see their dad sitting around on his ass all the time -- they needed to see me working at something."

NEW WOOD FROM OLD

That something turned out to be recycled wood. Banducci, Maggie (the relationship remains amicable) and partners Richard McFarland and Erika Carpenter began by buying up old buildings around the North Coast.

"A lot of them were fabricated from straight-grained heart redwood," Banducci said. "With clear redwood running up to $7 a board foot, it was pretty lucrative."

But derelict redwood buildings are a finite resource, and the partners soon realized they needed to look elsewhere for raw material. Ultimately, they settled on Thailand. Reason: The Thai government is replacing millions of old wooden sleepers -- ties -- on the nation's railways.

"They eventually plan to replace them all with concrete (ties)," said Banducci. "There are roughly 3 million old ties in the country, and they're all virgin tropical hardwood -- teak, ironwood, rosewood, merba, padauk, narra, many others. It's beautiful stuff."

Thus, AsiaRain was born. The partners already have bought up about 30,000 ties and plan to keep acquiring as supplies become available.

The ties aren't cheap, said McFarland, Banducci's partner.

"The precise amount is proprietary, but it's a lot more than you'd think you'd pay for an old railroad tie. The Thais are doing well off this deal, which is fine -- they need to make a profit, too."

RECYCLED TREASURE

After a tough cull, the sleepers are milled and planed into flooring in Thailand. The finished flooring is shipped in containers to the Bay Area, then trucked to a warehouse in McCloud (Siskiyou County). So far, said Banducci, about 150,000 board feet of wood is in storage in McCloud, with an equivalent amount on its way. The wood will retail for $6.50 to $8.50 per square foot, depending on the quality, said Banducci.

"It's almost impossible to get this kind of wood anymore," Banducci said. "Supplies are extremely tight, and there are profound marketing problems -- boycotts for old-growth rain forest woods are only going to increase. Our woods, obviously, are strictly from recycled sources."

Because so many different woods are involved, AsiaRain sells by color rather than species.

"We can't even identify some of these trees involved," Banducci acknowledges.

Floor types are cinnamon, rose, gold and classic -- the latter a juxtaposed fruit salad of hues ranging from dark red through rose petal pink to golds, ochers, umbers and deep chocolate brown.

Banducci said upscale office buildings, resorts and high-end custom homes are all logical venues for his product.

Nothing speaks as eloquently for AsiaRain's woods as a bedroom floor in Banducci's house -- it's finished with the classic mix. In the afternoon sun, the deep, resonant hues of the flooring bathe the room in reflected pinkish light.

Unlike many recycled woods, AsiaRain's flooring doesn't have that funky look. Dings and nail holes are either milled out or plugged; the grain is straight, clear, generally unmarred.

AsiaRain has made some preliminary sales, including a batch of rosewood sold to Lake Tahoe contractor George Pasvantis, who used it in a home at Squaw Valley.

SAVE THE RAIN FOREST

" It's interesting wood, it has a unique style," said Pasvantis. "We use a lot of exotic woods, and we find that people have very specialized tastes when it comes to them. (AsiaRain) should do well if they identify their niche. One thing that's going for them is that they're selling a recycled product. Recycled woods are very hot right now, particularly in the Tahoe area."

Banducci said rain forest conservation lies at the heart of both the company's marketing strategy and its corporate ethos.

"Our basic mission is to sell woods that have been pushed aside by progress,

woods that would otherwise rot if we didn't use them," he said. "At the same time, we're emphasizing that these are woods of surpassing beauty. They are from the original indigenous old-growth rain forest. There's nothing else like them available today."