Have you ever made a purchase in your life by which you gave the green light for planting a tree? It’s a great incentive that can be launched by a company anywhere, selling anything.
More often than not, however, the companies that embrace this duty to the environment are ones which use trees to make their products – namely, stationery and wooden products. Makes sense.
Another company has been added to this do-gooder list: Woodstone, which sells handcrafted wooden watches and sunglasses. For every item sold, a tree is planted. We applaud the two men who are behind the growing saplings. And I do mean young trees, as the company is not even three years old.
Originally from Turkey, Enes Ulutas and Fatih Cigdem were globetrotters who eventually settled on the idea of founding their company. Throughout their travels, they had seen firsthand how wood is so widely used – a wooden spoon here, a wooden necklace there. Simple and strong, yet warm and charming, it became their material of choice when it was time to make the game plan for Woodstone.
The pair still connects with diverse corners of the globe by sourcing fine, durable wood for manufacturing. Currently on the menu are maple, rosewood, black sandalwood and green sandalwood for the watches, and ebony, oak and rosewood for the sunglasses.
Very unique, right? There’s more: no watch or pair of sunglasses is the same. As long as we’re talking about handcrafted wooden goods, identicalness is impossible. Because wood’s patterns are ever-changing, in hues and loops and lines, based on the trees from which it came, no two products can be identical – much like palm lines, or fingerprints.
So the buyer of a Woodstone watch or pair of sunglasses is not only giving back to the environment with the planting of the tree, but is giving a truly one-of-a-kind gift to him/herself or someone else, if it’s a gift.
Enes Ulutas and Fatih Cigdem, like all designers, respect fashion and aesthetics, but they also respect nature. Visit their website to see the latest of their products, and follow them on Instragram @woodstone_wooden_watches.
Images pulled from Woodstone Instagram page. Featured image shows Woodstone’s black sandalwood Venice sunglasses and Queen watch.
Author: Kelly Milone
Kelly Milone holds an MA in cultural heritage management (Johns Hopkins University), BA in anthropology, BFA in dance and Arabic minor (Montclair State University). She is a dance teacher and choreographer, quick-study interior designer, and aspiring creative and travel writer.
