Intimate Family Story...
There’s a heartfelt family story behind the Amazon Wooden brand.
It was the year 2000, and we had a small store called Amazon Furniture. Tucked away on a side street, it was a modest place. There, we displayed solid wood cabinets and accent furniture that my father crafted together with a woodworker. Every item was handmade and also carried modern design elements. After a while, customers started making a point to pass by our street. They’d drop in asking, “What’s new?” It was a genuine curiosity, like a friendly visit. My brother and I were in middle school at the time. Sometimes, after school, we’d stop by the shop and help our father with small tasks. Looking back now, I realize my brother and I truly grew up in the business. Of course, we didn’t know back then that we were choosing our careers. All I remember is—we enjoyed being there.
Our First Treehouse
In 2004, we designed a “Treehouse” for Boğaziçi University’s Hisar Campus—one of our first significant projects. Wooden construction systems were not well known in our country, so they were rarely chosen. Even today, I wouldn’t say they’re widely used. We noticed this unfamiliarity and decided to take a bold step. With my father’s knowledge as a Wood Industry Engineer, we figured out the mechanics of these structures. The Treehouse became one of the coziest spots on campus.
Amazon Formed Plywood
While I studied Forest Engineering and my brother pursued Civil Engineering, my father shifted focus toward producing molded wood. This marked the nearing end of Amazon Furniture. By 2006, our name had become Amazon Formed Plywood. We began supplying molded wood products in bulk to major brands.
Design Enters Our Lives
We were in the thick of a serious struggle, working day and night. Meanwhile, of course, the production of molded items resulted in all kinds of leftover pieces. One day, my father took some of those scraps and designed himself a lounge chair! That’s how design started to become part of our journey.
We had graduated from university and wanted to join our father’s team. As Amazon Formed Plywood, we were able to add as much aesthetic as we wanted to molded wood products through our designs.
We Were Nourished by Our Customers
At that time, our company was attracting attention just by displaying products in front of the workshop. We had placed a unique perspective on durable and healthy products. After a while, we started forming friendships with the people who came to check out our products. From the people we chatted with, we began hearing sentences that nourished us, like:
“We even enjoy just visiting this place.”
“You’re doing such beautiful work.” “Can I come volunteer on the weekends? I love wood.”
Our workshops were never solely focused on profit. From the very beginning, our effort was to add value to the lives of those who bought our products. Instead of corporate phrases like customer satisfaction, we adopted the principle of building a bond with people. These words from our visitors showed us that we were on the right path. As interest in our products grew, we embraced our work with even more enthusiasm. We had started designing all kinds of chairs. We were producing and selling them in bulk in raw form.
We wanted to transform wood—the only sustainable production material—into forms where life could be built within. That’s why we started producing formed laminated beams. First, we made laminated wooden winter gardens for our own backyard, then for large residential sites.
Amazon Wooden Enters Our Lives
As time went on, business was growing. It was time to move all production into our own building. My father’s graduation thesis was a wooden factory; my brother’s was the static calculations of wooden structures. We combined knowledge and experience. And in 2016, we built Amazon Wooden, Turkey’s only wooden factory. It was the realization of a dream. We were very happy. In this building, world-famous ancient designs came to life, and there was also room for bold projects. While shaping wood, we often did what was thought to be impossible—that’s why our customers called us “the last woodbenders.”
After bringing our wooden building to life, we wanted to improve our shipping processes as well. The number of people we were sending products to and the distances our products were traveling were increasing. However, none of us were experts in this area. Shipping procedures, potential mishaps, unforeseen accidents during transportation… There were many times I asked myself, “How are we going to manage all this?”
But the understanding of our customers and the sincerity of the trust we built with them quickly calmed my worries. I set aside fear and anxiety and started researching how to provide the best service. Now, we can ship products all across Turkey. We’ve even started exporting abroad. Back when we were wandering around our small workshop, we couldn’t have even dreamed of all this. It’s clear now that my father’s foresight was invaluable.
I am Deniz Tınazcı, a Forest Engineer. My brother Yusuf Tınazcı is a Civil Engineer, and our father is a Woodworking Industrial Engineer. Amazon Wooden Design Stories were born out of this unity. Our design stories always emerged naturally from life itself. Sometimes a piece caught our eye, sometimes a simple question like “How would it be?”, sometimes a specific request. For example, one of our most beloved models, Salsa, originated when I asked my father, “Dad, can you design a lightweight yet comfortable chair for reading books?”
Daisy was shaped by inspiration from the lines of Ramon & Ramona, characters from the Turkish cartoon Abdülcanbaz.
Roza was born from the shape taken by sawdust accumulating on a shaped piece as the wind carried it.
Being able to see, to imagine, to focus on the prototype of a chair before falling asleep, to wake up and sketch it over and over again, to feel it, to be able to touch it before producing it, to experiment repeatedly until finding its best form, to always keep production open to improvement, and to achieve an environmentally friendly and sustainable result… The joy we get from all of this is truly priceless.
Imagine that the wooden products in your home continue to work to erase your carbon footprint. I would like to emphasize once again: wood is the only truly sustainable building material. It is the only construction material that has the ability to capture carbon. Although it is not yet very common in our country, skyscrapers are now being built with wood in America, Europe, and Japan.
At Amazon Wooden, we are working diligently to ensure that the value of the material of the future is recognized. We raise our trees from saplings to forests and strive to craft our products with them.
Additionally, I would like to point out that Amazon Wooden does not only support a sustainable life through its work. We value all living beings on this planet. There are about ten, maybe even more, stray dogs living in front of our door. We try our best to take care of them. We believe a good life should be possible for all creatures.
Deniz Tınazcı
