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eMatrimony.org Supporting, Encouraging, and Challenging the WWME Community |
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| News - National Full Circle Wood, LLC is pleased to announce a License agreement with Worldwide Marriage Encounter Wayne & Norene Kilburn I have been a woodworking enthusiast since the mid 1970’s. The first item I made was a set of speaker cabinets, still in use today in my shop. This led to a small side business of cabinet making. I had no formal woodworking training, learning as I went from fellow cabinetmakers. Pleasingly, this group of craftsman was eager to share their knowledge and various woodworking techniques. In more recent years, I made items and donated them to local non-profit auctions to assist in fund raising endeavors. This led to requests to make items similar to what was donated, which led to custom items. Our daughter is a webmaster and she encouraged me to launch a website, presenting and completing a product line. I never kept or took pictures. All I had left were notes and sketches associated with making past items. To complete the website, I made many of these items again, just to get photos. The website was designed in 2001 and launched in 2002. The company name, “Full Circle Wood, LLC”, was selected to define the nature of the wood we use in our current product mix. The wood for the products was derived from discarded pallets and skids. I continue to be amazed at the beauty and selection of natural wood that is hidden beneath layers of oil-soaked and weathered wood. For the WWME logo, I purchase Red Heart, Yellow Heart, and Ebony wood. Several times a year, people send me or give logs from trees knocked down or cut down on their property to make them something special. Currently I have Walnut, Maple, and Oak logs drying, waiting to get milled into something special. We had our Marriage Encounter weekend in the spring of 2001 and were welcomed into a vibrant, loving, and caring community. In this community, the husband of a couple encountered in the mid 1970’s died after a brief illness, leaving his wife. This gentleman’s passing inspired me to make an item that could be shared in our community, in his memory. Hal’s Honor was the first item made using the likeness of the WWME logo. We searched for natural colored woods of the world to capture God’s natural creation and marry these colors to the WWME symbol of faith, love and marriage. It was at the WWME Convention in DeKalb, Ill., in 2003 that I became inspired to make more items. On that Saturday night, I had just talked to a couple that made a quilt and was going to raffle it to raise funds to expand the WWME presence in Kenya. Up in the stands participating in the convention, I received several visions, hazy to describe… yet, clear in my mind. Daktari. Would be made and donated to augment the Kenya Raffle. S. S. Solitude. Would be to recognize Surviving Spouses. Wings Away. To represent sprit of flight and eternalism. Coupler. The value of Marriage in his name. Renewal. Keeping the Marriage alive, vibrant and fresh. I could close my eyes and see these items as images of expression. I roughly sketched them to gauge proportions, dimensions, and get a sense of wood types to complete the item. In discussing this vision with my wife and describing the sketches, I realized that the visions were a gift to me… I was chosen to use my talents and turn the visions into items and then share them with people with like practices and thoughts - the WWME community. We realized that the logo was copywrite protected and would need permission from WWME to sell anything in the logo likeness. Since we could not sell the items, our community was the immediate beneficiary, as many of these items were donated and now proudly adorn their homes. Part of perfecting the items, many were started, scrapped, and dimensions altered to get the most meaningful presentation. Different colors of wood were experimented with. I had never done anything this “artsy” before. In October, the Northeast Region has what is called a “Lovership Weekend”. I requested about 20 minutes to do a presentation of the items to couples of the Northeast who attended. This would be the first public presentation of these visions. I had never been artful in words or presenting; but in this instance… the words flowed. Tears flowed down cheeks as the meanings of each item were presented and the items were passed around the room. (Portions of this presentation can be read on our website, FullCircleWood.com; presentations are linked at S.S. Solitude and Circling Servant product descriptions.) That weekend exposure along with encouragement from the Northeast couples prompted us to request a license agreement. This was a new and different challenge. To request “business strangers” to grant a right to use and copy a protected logo seemed insurmountable. Our plan was to find out how to obtain this license agreement. Who do we talk with? Who do we write to? Eventually it came down to several very close and dear friends who attended the InterFaith Board meeting in Houston, TX this past spring [of 2005]. Part of promoting the desire to obtain a License Agreement included giving items I had made to couples around the U.S. Several of these couples were on the InterFaith Board and attended this meeting. The formal license agreement was recognized and granted. It took a few weeks of mailing and getting all signatures complete. This License Agreement journey led us to cross paths with many kind, loving, caring, and generous couples. Looking back as we write this, that’s the kind of people we are. We are right where we belong. With a License Agreement in hand, we had to come up with a marketing plan for our product line. The WWME National Convention in Towson, MD in July 2005 seemed a natural fit. The time between securing the agreement in April and the convention in July was not sufficient time to manufacture an inventory to have items to sell. Our creative juices went into overdrive. Here was our dilemma. Exposing a new business and product offering without an inventory to sell… not good. What would people want? What would they like? What could we realistically prepare for? Prior to this Convention, we made several sets of Couplers and The Perfect Fit and gave them to couples to wear at the Convention. We beamed with pride when couples wore these items throughout the Convention. To attain exposure and explain our craft, we needed to have a booth to display the entire product offering. To gain product interest we decided that we needed feedback from the couples, so we decided to have a free raffle. This raffle would allow couples enter and select an item of choice. This was quite successful. The winners of this raffle were Betty & Tony Fabrizio of Sandy Hook, CT. This couple was recently encountered, and they were absolutely thrilled with winning an item that they had chosen. The winning entry was drawn by Bob & Joy Hernandez, WWME U.S. Secretariat Couple. Betty & Tony Fabrizio recently sent me an email stating, “We are the winners of RENEWAL at the WWME Convention. It hangs over our bed as a daily reminder of our Sacrament and Love. We LOVE it!” I’d like to thank Ralph & Jane Becker of eMatrimony for encouraging and allowing us to write an article describing our business to fellow encountered couples. The gift of giving keeps on giving. Wood You Like To See What I Saw? Full Circle Wood, LLC [Editor’s note: Since they are fully-licensed to use the WWME logo, we are pleased to add a link to the Full Circle Wood web site on the eMatrimony.org “Links” page.] Click here for a printable version (PDF, 91KB)
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