Sawmill Business Podcast

Laura Sissoko: Atlantic Fine Woods Welcome back to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast! Today, your host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Laura Sissoko from Atlantic Fine Woods. Laura's story and the story of Atlantic Fine Woods began about ten years ago. "I studied architecture in school, and I was interested in furniture design. And I had been working for a furniture designer in New York City for a while. My father saw an opportunity when Gibson Guitars was getting raided for having allegedly illegally sourced ebony and other exotic woods. The country where I was born, the Central African Republic, had recently started a managed forest system with neighboring countries, The Congo and Cameroon. So we knew that we had a single chain of custody source for exotic woods, and that's how we started.  Several years into it, there was a coup d'etat in the Central African Republic, and we were no longer able to export ethically. That's when we had to switch to domestic wood, and that's when we