If you thought Ann Knight and David Knight stepped away from Teragren Bamboo Flooring, Panels & Veneer in July 2011 to transition toward a cozy retirement, you were dead wrong.
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If you thought Ann Knight and David Knight stepped away from Teragren Bamboo Flooring, Panels & Veneer in July 2011 to transition toward a cozy retirement, you were dead wrong.
In fact, the very next day the couple was hard at work launching Resource Fiber, a company whose mission is to foster a large-scale domestic bamboo industry right in the heart of the United States. "About 15 years ago, Ann and I co-founded Teragren Bamboo and, at that time, the original objective was to develop a domestic bamboo industry in the U.S.," David Knight said recently. "But we realized at that time that just going out and planting bamboo and creating a raw material wasn't the way to do it-you can't just push raw material in an industry that doesn't exist."
So phase I, so to say, of the couple's project was to foster the bamboo products industry in the U.S. Over the years, the Knights built up and expanded upon the Teragren portfolio, eventually offering flooring, plywood panels, worktops and countertops, and a full line of accessories from trim, to transitions, to stair parts. In its wake, the bamboo products market in the U.S. exploded to the point where a website like www.TotallyBamboo.com, for instance, offers more than 230 home-oriented bamboo products, including cutting boards, bowls and plates, picture frames, and chairs. "Many other people around the country saw the benefits of bamboo," David Knight said.
Enter phase II: "When we stepped away from Teragren 'to pursue other opportunities,' this was the other opportunity," David Knight said. The new company is Resource Fiber, with headquarters in Bainbridge Island, Wash., and its tag line is "Rapidly Renewable Fiber for Industry." Co-founding the company were David Knight, serving as president, CEO and CFO; Ann Knight, chief communications officer and executive vice president; and Craig Thomason, chief operations officer and executive vice president of strategic development. Also on board are Jonathan Scherch, vice president of academic and cultural affairs; and advisors John Woods, Lee Slaven and Ed Briscoe.
Resource Fibers's ultimate goal is to become the domestic source for bamboo product makers like Teragren. To that end, the company launched subsidiary Resource Fiber/Alabama LLC (Cullman, Ala.) with goal of creating a "bamboo epicenter" within the state's 17 counties that comprise a portion of the U.S.'s Black Belt, so named for the region's thin layer of rich, black topsoil. Co-founding that subsidiary was Marsha Folsom, a former first lady of Alabama with a background in banking, real estate and business development.
Currently, Resource Fiber/Alabama LLC is growing thousands of moso bamboo plantlets in a nursery near Tuscaloosa, Ala. Working with contract farmers in the Black Belt, the plantlets will next be planted, and David Knight hopes the first harvest will take place in 6 years. Afterward, domestically grown bamboo flooring would hit the marketplace. In the long term, David Knight said he envisions Alabama being planted with "hundreds of thousands of acres" of moso bamboo; "This is the 20-, or 25-year plan," David Knight said.
What about generating revenue until then? Today, Resource Fiber/Alabama LLC is still planning its manufacturing operations, but it has already struck an agreement with Teragren to make some of its products once manufacturing sites are up and running. "We expect to be in production down there within 2 years," David Knight said.
The operations in Alabama will be robust. David Knight said the new company is looking to make textiles, bio-plastics and even railroad ties using bamboo. "We expect to have, in 5 to 10 years, close to six or 10 facilities in Alabama," David Knight said. And within 25 years, Resource Fiber should employ tens of thousands of employees. Of Resource Fiber's proposed scale and aspirations, David Knight said, "Ann and I are just really motivated to make the world a better place."
