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PaTS Makes High Point Debut
March 14,
2011 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in High Point on March 15, 2011
Three years after liquidating his furniture company, South Cone, and passing on the leadership of the Sustainable Furnishings Council the year after, Gerry Cooklin is back at High Point Furniture Market with a line of home accessories from his Amazon-region non-profit, PaTS.
PaTS (Partnerships and Technology for Sustainability) works to develop the inherent craft skills of the indigenous people of the Amazon to produce home accents and accessories for sale to consumers. PaTS will show table-top items and accent furniture in Market Square, space M-6055.
When my lifes path made it clear that I had to let go of my interests in the U.S. furniture industry back in 2008, it became very clear that my know-how had to focus in the work I started in the Amazon in 2001," said Cooklin, a native of Peru. "I strongly believe that the home furnishings industry will be an important player in the saving of the Amazon, and that the PaTS model is the best prototype out there to achieve just this.
Cooklin has dedicated the last two years to ensuring that PaTS, (which also means "Earth" in the language of the Amazon's Yanesha people) not only survived a tough economic times, but also re-invented itself with new product lines and visionary organizational strategies.
New product lines include two collections debuting at Market, Delgada and Artistic. PaTS also will show additions to its longtime Classic and Seating collections.
Cooklin, founding chairman of the Sustainable Furnishings Council and a longtime advocate of enlisting indigenous peoples' buy-in to protecting forest resources, said PaTS has a goal beyond selling product.
Any one dollar spent on purchasing a PaTS product, will have the maximum benefit to the sustainability of the Amazon than one dollar spent in any other product at market or donation to any Amazon conservation organization," Cooklin said. "We are adding further value to the trees of the indigenous community (The Yanesha) forests that we work with."
PaTS intends to distribute its product line through its own U.S. distribution organization in order to offer the products at a substantially lower price for U.S. consumers.