Smith & Fong

Smith & Fong was founded in 1989 on the premise that bamboo offered unique opportunities and solutions to some of the world's social and environmental challenges. The company began the company's exploration with bamboo boxes, integrating form and function, making a container that was aesthetically pleasing, but also quite useful. Within four years,... the company had begun manufacturing bamboo flooring and quickly exhausted the company's manufacturing capacity in Taiwan. Moving the company's operations to China, the company converted a tea-processing plant into a factory that produced bamboo flooring. At the company's headquarters in San Francisco, the company changed the company's business model and began distributing the first bamboo flooring in the United State under the Plyboo brand. In 1996, the company introduced bamboo plywood to the American market. Smith & Fong incorporated in 1997 and spent the remainder of the decade developing new sizes and applications for the company's bamboo flooring and plywood lines. In 2000, the company launched the company's bamboo strand line of flooring. Strand differs from typical bamboo flooring in that the bamboo is not cut into strips and laminated, but instead thrashed and pressed into dense logs. The logs are sliced and fabricated into flooring or plywood, creating a harder, denser material with an entirely new bamboo aesthetic. Smith & Fong expanded its product line again in 2001, introducing a line of plywood and flooring products made entirely of coconut palm and marketed under the Durapalm brand. True to the company's environmental ideals, the palm trees from which the wood is milled are coconut palms that no longer yield fruit. With the later additions of Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC® Certified 100%) Pure Bamboo and Soy-based formaldehyde-free binders, Smith & Fong now offers a wide range of sustainable design solutions to the international marketplace. To learn more about the company's products, please visit the LEED Credits page.Read More