Trade misson a success.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Uprooted Designs - Buckstone Inc.

A recent trade mission to Detroit is already paying solid dividends for a North Bay import company.

Uprooted Designs, a newly created division of Buckstone Inc. and Vested Interest Trading, is seeking to gain a foothold into the U.S. Midwestern market by selling customized teak root furniture to wholesale distributors.

Walter Dean, Buckstone's business development director, anticipates the company could be doing $8,000 to $10,000 worth of business selling Indonesian-made teak root furniture within the first 60 to 90 days after the mission, based on agreements reached with three Detroit area wholesalers.

"It would be pre-mature to name the companies, but we have working agreements with all three."

Buckstone Inc., a holding company and business group, consists of five North Bay companies headed by the husband-and-wife team of Brant Bywater and Jennifer McNutt Bywater. The company includes Uprooted Designs, Vested Interest, Rock Solid Creations, along with a flooring business and building-supply company.

Though Uprooted Designs and Rock Solid were represented on the June 7 to 11 FedNor-sponsored trade mission, it was the artistically-inspired tables, chairs, benches, stools and sculpture fashioned from high-grade teak root from Indonesia that appealed most to Michigan business people.

"It was one of the...