My encounter with unused wood and my journey to starting WOOD STOCK YARD.

Hello, my name is Takahiro Hayashi.

Monosus is a company that is primarily engaged in web production, but is also taking on a variety of other projects, such as agriculture and food, employee cafeterias, training engineers in rural areas, and even marionettes.

This time, I took on the challenge of selling timber, and in particular the project to sell unused timber, that is, timber that has been taken out of general circulation.

In this article, I would like to explain how I ended up taking on a timber sales project, which at first glance seems unrelated to web production, and how I have been making fun use of unused wood.

The project name was "WOOD STOCK YARD."
First, I would like to talk about how I first encountered unused materials.

I fell in love with the charm of unused materials at a miraculous time

The first trigger was my own move and the accompanying construction of a new house.

I moved from Osaka to Tokyo when I was 27 years old due to a job change. I lived in Tokyo for 14 years until I was 41, but as my children were born and grew up, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was uncomfortable living in Tokyo. It's a common story. So, after many twists and turns, I decided to move with my family to Karuizawa Town in Nagano Prefecture in April 2020.

Initially, we had planned to find a nice second-hand house and renovate it ourselves to live in, but we were looking for a very specific location due to our family's circumstances, and considering that our parents would be coming to visit frequently, we didn't think we would be able to find a suitable property quickly, so we decided we might as well just build one.

And so the house-building project began unexpectedly. Even before I had a concrete plan for the house, I had already decided that it should be a wooden structure and that the exterior walls should also be made of wood. I had a strong desire to use wood for the exterior walls, and I had personally researched various options.

At that time, we received an inquiry from Monosus' corporate website. It was from a lumber company in Shinkiba, asking for advice on a project to "renew their website."

When I saw the contents of the inquiry, I thought "Hmm?"
"I know this company..."

When I was personally looking for lumber for the exterior walls of my house, I had looked at their website and thought it was a good idea. However, I couldn't afford the construction costs of my house, so I just sat there gritting my teeth.

However, when it comes to web production projects, it's a different story. I immediately contacted the sales representative and said, "I want to work on this project, so I'll go with you."

And so began the project to renew the lumber company's website.
It's an incredibly fun job.
As you may have guessed, this was my first encounter with unused wood.

Miraculously, the timing of building my house and a website renewal project for a timber company coincided, and I ended up becoming completely immersed in unused wood.

We want to save lumber companies from the headache of "deadstock lumber"

The exterior walls of our house are now made of a generous amount of solid wood slats.

This is what the slatted exterior walls look like. Western red cedar planks are laid vertically at regular intervals.
The materials are of random length, thickness and width, and I like the moderate unevenness.

Moreover, because the size does not meet Japanese standards, we were able to get some dead stock lumber from a lumber store, which allowed us to keep the budget significantly lower than we had initially anticipated.

Normally, I would say, "I'm glad you were able to get the solid wood exterior panels at such a low price," but when we were discussing the renewal of our website, I casually said, "It was really helpful that you provided us with the dead stock. Thank you very much."

"Well, I'm glad that you're happy with it, but deadstock lumber is a real headache for us. I think all the lumber stores in Shin-Kiba are in trouble..."

The reply was:

Until then, I had only been aware of wood that was sold as a product, so it was at this time that I first learned that lumber companies were struggling with unused wood.
It was also at this time that I first became aware of the existence of unused wood that was not being distributed.

I had thought that the wood that was allocated to our family was just a lucky find, but after listening carefully to his story, I saw a completely different side to it.

The trees that lumber companies purchase are sorted into those that can actually be sold and those that cannot be sold for some reason, but as an amateur, I had imagined that a much higher percentage of the wood was rejected. The percentage varies greatly depending on the purchase lot, but at least 10%, and depending on the lumber manufacturer, close to 50% of the wood is rejected during sorting.

From my experience creating websites for several manufacturers, I feel that a product yield of over 99% is the norm.

However, I was shocked to learn that the percentage of unsellable timber can reach several tens of percent. What's more, I was astonished to learn that, while it would be one thing if it was rejected upstream in the distribution process, such a large percentage is rejected downstream, just before the final use.

The wood that has been selected and rejected is piled up and stored in an outdoor stockyard.

Naturally, the price of the lumber we sell takes this into account when setting it, but there is still a market price, and if we price it too high, sales will naturally fall.

Of course, there are many variables, such as the species of tree, its purpose, how it is procured, and how it is processed into products, so it is difficult to generalize, but in the business world where an operating profit margin of 10% is considered excellent, it is not difficult to imagine that this ratio puts a significant strain on the management of lumber companies.

So what happens to the trees that aren't sold?
Of course, the first thing to consider is selling it. However, wood that has fallen out of the distribution system is surprisingly hard to sell. Some wood can still be sold if the price is lowered to a certain extent, but the majority ends up spending a long time piled up in the stockyard.

When I asked, "What do you do with them in the end?" he replied, "We store them for as long as possible, and if there is a suitable case we will propose it to the customer, but if there is still no way to do anything with them, we have the bathhouse take them and turn them into firewood..."
Isn't that what it means?

As I imagined the image of natural forest wood burning in the bathhouse's boiler, I thought, "We have to do something about this..."
I still remember thinking that.

Of course, I think it's the way things should be if things that ultimately can't be used in any other way are turned into biomass fuel, but from my perspective, the mountain of unused wood piled up in front of me just didn't look like fuel.

Thus began the unused wood sales project, in which the lumber dealer and I were both deeply involved.

On August 4, 2022, we launched the WOOD STOCK YARD project, which aims to find new value in wood that is lying dormant in lumber companies' stockyards. We sell unused wood, mainly Western Red Cedar, and also develop various DIY projects.

At Harappa Daigaku, which creates playgrounds for adults and children mainly in Zushi City, Kanagawa Prefecture, people are making DIY jungle gyms out of unused materials.

I hope that more people will be able to experience the joy of wood that cannot be experienced with standard lumber. Also, if there are any new developments, we will report them on the Monosas site. Please look forward to it! ( To be continued )