ABOUT
How It All Started
Ugly Duckling Timber Co was founded from necessity and a love of timber. Sam spent 15 years as an airline pilot, finishing his career flying Boeing 767’s in Tokyo before COVID19 ground the world to a halt and decimated the industry. Katie was an early years school teacher with an ethos of play based learning and Nature Play to build gross motor skills, social skills and resilience. With a passion for woodworking, and Katie supporting him, Sam hung up his wings and picked up the tools, using the opportunity to re-tack and start a small business.
Starting small, cutting firewood with just a box trailer and a chainsaw, we quickly saw the value in repurposing the logs into a variety of furniture, nature play items, bird and reptile habitat, butchers blocks and a myriad of other items. This is how we coined our company motto “Making Furniture not Firewood.”
The "Ugly Duckling" Moment
In 2020 whilst canvassing ideas for a business name and whilst cutting firewood Sam commented he had an “Ugly Duckling” collection of logs, that were so unique and ugly, but he could see the potential for furniture in them. We realised at that point we had a new name and “Ugly Duckling Timber Co” was born.
Our log recycling quickly progressed into sawmilling and small furniture items, as well as continuing to grow our Nature Play and Playground offerings under the educational guidance of Katie. Around this time we were building our new house “Tuart’s Rest” which naturally incorporated a significant amount of timber reclaimed from the Tuart trees felled to make way for the house and milled years before.
Sam self-taught joinery and resin work and was soon making furniture as a significant part of his work. As his skills grew so did the business and after a severe forklift injury he lost his Aviation Medical in late 2021, at this point we decided to go all in on timber. A fortuitous opportunity presented to purchase some slabs from a farm and we quickly recognised there was a demand for good quality seasoned timber supply backed by good old-fashioned customer service with honesty and integrity.
Thus began the rapid growth of Ugly Duckling Timber Co and transition to timber supply, wholesale and machining.
Where We Are Today
In 2022 we took the leap and bought our Neergabby farm so we had space to grow and expand. With unlimited storage space we have been able to stockpile a significant amount of slabs, boards and posts with more arriving all the time!
Ugly Duckling Timber is now one of the largest suppliers of quality seasoned WA hardwoods here in Perth.
We are specialists in large and hard to find sizes, structural and furniture timbers, but haven’t forgotten our roots and still stock seasoned quality firewood and offcuts and small timber pieces. All backed with friendly advice by a small family owned WA business.
What started as firewood has become one of Perth's most trusted timber suppliers. We're still Sam and Katie, still a family business, still passionate about helping you find the perfect piece of timber.
