kalvin

Hi Kalimantan, I am the owner of Country Haven, I was probably the one you spoke to during your visit at my shop. I would like to expand some of points you mentioned here to benefit the readers of this forum and hopefully encourage a healthy discussion on the topic of teak. Country Haven have been in the teak business since 1996. We own our teak factory in Indonesia and process our own teak for our furniture. We do not supply to any other shops, everything we produce are sold exclusively by our shop. Thus, this led to the first point you mentioned; yes, all our teak are from Indonesia. On your second point, you referred to barossa furnishings, and question why we do not have burmese teak as they do. Well, this is quite a difficult question... it's like asking why Haagen-Dazs ice cream comes in Green Tea flavour and why Ben & Jerry do not have Green Tea flavour. To be more direct, it is simply a different business and we run our businesses differently. I am not exactly sure on how they operate, but for us, we only sell teak furniture produced by our own factory in Indonesia. On the third point, you brought up a very interesting subject, the age of teak wood. It seems that you may have a misconception on the value and age of wood. Yes, it is true that the older the wood, the more expensive it gets, but 30-50 years is in no way considered old as you implied. Old teak is usually between 60 -120 years, these are the one that are more expensive and they usually come from Burma. If you are doubting that our teak are 30-50 years, try thinking from the other end. A 10-15 years teak is still a small tree and practically impossible to make the 180cm TV console you requested. (Imagine using twigs and branches to form a table top) :-) One of the reasons why we could sell slightly lower than market price is also due to the fact that the factory that produces the furniture in Indonesia belongs to us and we do sell a good volume here locally. I have found some useful sources on the web on teak tree age that you might want to have a read. http://www.giantchess.com/manufacturer/about_teak_wood.html http://www.eurodesign.se/doc/promote_teak.pdf http://www.impressionsindecor.com/us/burmese_ban.htm http://www.upthegardenpath.co.uk/qualityteak.html Please do ask any other questions on teak, I will be more than willing to discuss further. Thanks and Cheers! Kalvin Country Haven