Statewide Marketing Team

In the Fall of 2017 NCSU Wood Products Extension began to putt together a grant application to fund a statewide forest and wood products marketing team.  The goal is to over a two and half year period create a strong networking group that identifies the issues that are limiting the full successful marketing of North Carolina’s forest resources and to outline steps to implement to grow sales and profitability of landowners and businesses involved in the production and marketing of North Carolina’s forest and wood products.

As things turned out, the grant was not approved until May of 2019 and we began our work in the Fall of 2019.  We began with three information meetings in the three regions in the state, at Marion, Troy and Kenansville.

The statewide marketing grant program is an effort of the US Forest Service to support a state’s forest products industry and is managed by the Wood Education and Resource Center located in Princeton, WV (aka the WERC).  Several states have been funded by the USFS to create statewide marketing teams, such as AL, OR and WI.

The grant will work in both of the two broad categories of the forest and wood products industry:

1-Primary-roundwood logs, chips, lumber, veneer, firewood

2-Secondary-cabinets, furniture, millwork, engineered products, fuel pellets

NC Marketing Team Highlights

• All 100 NC counties
• Host regional meeting for networking and sharing ideas
• Participation by businesses and support organizations like NCSU, NCFA, NCSU NCCES, NC Tree Farm Association, etc.
• Outreach efforts at the IWF 2018 in Atlanta
• Assisted existing, startup business and those developing new business ventures

Please contact Harry Watt if you have any questions at cell 704-880-3067 and harry_watt@ncsu.edu.

Members of the NC Statewide Marketing Team

North Carolina State University Wood Products Extension-Harry Watt, Phil Mitchell, Frederik Laleicke

North Carolina Forest Service-Priscilla Morris, Robert Ross

Carla Harper, West65thinc

This group are the paid staff of the project and traveled the state hosting regional meeting and working directly with individual industry professionals and businesses. Our outreach efforts included hosting Zoom online meetings when we were prevented from hosting on site meetings in 2021 and 2022.

Contact Information

Contact: Harry W. Watt, Wood Products Specialist, cell 704-880-3067, email harry_watt@ncsu.edu

Wood Products Extension Department supports the wide variety of wood products businesses in North Carolina and assisting the Cooperative Extension network of county offices that serve the people of North Carolina.