A bit about product origin

When I started this business, I didnt feel too happy with the idea of selling products that might be causing environmental problems in the areas they originate.
In the back of my mind I imagined hundred year old trees brought crashing down, in virgin rain forrests....

Is this something we should overlook?

We stock a number of products made from coconut palm. This is a tropical hardwood, grown in South East Asia. The wood comes from managed plantations, (i.e coconut farms)and provides an alternative to felling trees from rainforrests. In fact this wood until recentley has been an unwated by-product of coconut plantations, and until recently this wood was often burnt. Coconut palm is substainable, as the trees are replanted after about 70 years. With is contracsting dark flecks, against lighter core wood it is also an attractive, and unusual wood...

Have a look at these products using coconut palm from Thailand:


Wooden Expresso Cup

4-piece Salt & Pepper set

Japanese rice bowl with Lid

A long road to Launching...

Keeping an idea alive, over the course of weeks, and months is one of the most difficult things I have had to do. Espeically when others around you don't share your enthusiasm...and when the progress you make is sometimes so small.

The number of times I thought about packing in the whole idea, and going back to the world of open plan offices....
Each time I said to myself, "look how far I have come..." and continued along the path.

Well I havent got there yet...but in December 2009 My website, the source of so much effort, went live! www.thecamphortree.co.uk

the beginning....

I was sat at my PC in a Marketing Dept of a medium sized company, in a typical open plan office, thinking, there must be more to life than this?
The office party? The sycophantic team mates laughing at the boss's jokes, the self styled "crazy" guy, with his "hilarious" ties...

Within a few months I had handed in my notice, sold my house, and with my dusty backpack, I was on the other side of the world... I felt an awakening, like I had woken up and discovered real life. For the first time in years I felt fully alive. But from now on this is how I would try to live my life......

I travelled beyond Australia, New Zealand and into Asia... Malaysia, Japan, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Singapore...truly a trip of a lifetime, and a for me a life changing experience. This trip sowed seeds in my imagination, gave me time to think, relax, and see the world and my own life in a new light. That open plan office seemed so far away...like another world. and it occurred to me I might not have to return to it...

I returned to the UK 16 months later, a different person, an open mind and a set of new ideas. In my backpack were some unusual, and attractive product samples....