The durapalm story
Exotic, sustainable materials have always been a passion with us here at Smith & Fong and have remained so for more than 25 years. After establishing ourselves in the bamboo world, we noticed palm, another under-valued, little understood building material, and got interested. We began our initial explorations in the year 2000 and shortly after brought to market beautiful palm flooring and panel products.
These products found their way into major branded companies like Aveda, Hotel W and Starbucks. Institutional applications came along with the Japanese Consulate, University of San Francisco, Medical Center, the San Diego Central Library and the Kansas City, City Hall building.
Palm is an unusual material that required us to think differently. That wasn’t too hard for a company that has invested its career in the “think different” school of thought, but I can’t over emphasis how different palm is from other wood materials. I will leave it at that for the moment and we can continue the discussion later.
There are vast resources in palm whether it is in Central America, Africa, the Pacific islands or South East Asia. Much good can be done in these locations creating sustainable industries, jobs and offering an alternative to cutting old growth trees that are hard to replace. We were captivated and chose India to begin the next chapter in our book of palm.
Take a look at our site and then imagine a world with more durapalm in it.
