Our History

Smith & Fong – makers of Plyboo® and Durapalm® – was founded in 1989 on the premise that bamboo offered unique opportunities and solutions to some of the world’s social and environmental challenges.

We began our exploration with bamboo boxes, integrating form and function, making a container that was aesthetically pleasing, but also quite useful. Within four years, we had begun manufacturing bamboo flooring and quickly exhausted our manufacturing capacity in Taiwan. Moving our operations to China, we converted a tea-processing plant into a factory that produced bamboo flooring.

At our headquarters in San Francisco, we changed our business model and began distributing the first bamboo flooring in the United States under the Plyboo® brand. In 1996, we 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 our bamboo flooring and bamboo plywood lines.

In 2000, we launched our 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 sugar palm, marketed under the Durapalm® brand. True to our environmental ideals, the trees from which the wood is milled are 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 our products, please visit the LEED Credits page.