Editor's note: MasayaCo co-founder Aram Terry joined Sustainable Jungle host Joy Stephens on the Sustainable Jungle podcast in May 2025 to talk about how a Peace Corps posting in Nicaragua grew into a regenerative furniture, homes, and lumber business. MasayaCo is one of Sustainable Jungle's top-rated brands in the furniture category, and this conversation goes into what earned that rating: the vertical supply chain, the reforestation-as-business model, the 1.3 million trees planted, and the design work behind it all.
The full transcript is below. It covers Aram's Peace Corps years and the French businessman whose reforestation-as-business model became the seed of MasayaCo's approach. It walks through the 2008 tree farm and the hurricane wood processing that started the operation. It tells the story of meeting Abril in the artisan town of Masaya, Nicaragua, and the origin of MasayaCo's handwoven chairs. It gets into how the business handles solar power and waste-to-energy, and into LA fire rebuilds through Masaya Homes. And it closes on what Aram calls the biggest lesson of building a values-led business: that vertical integration is not to be underestimated.
Listen to the full episode: Sustainable Jungle · YouTube
Sustainable Jungle is a weekly podcast about people building products and coalitions for a more sustainable resource and energy economy. The show rates brands for their sustainability practices, and the podcast features deeper conversations with the brands behind those ratings.
Aram Terry, MasayaCo co-founder, in Nicaragua.
The full conversation.
From Nashville to Nicaragua.
Joy: Aram, welcome to the show. Let's start right at the beginning. Where were you born and where did you grow up?
Aram: Thanks for having me. I'm from Nashville, Tennessee originally. I went to university in Boston at Boston University, and then came to Nicaragua for the Peace Corps in 2002, where I've been ever since.
Joy: And is that what first sparked your interest in reforestation and social impact, that experience at the Peace Corps?
Aram: When I first came to Nicaragua I didn't really know what to expect. I'd never been to Central America or even the tropics, so I was expecting to see kind of a big jungle. But when I got here, one of the first things that impacted me was how there are people everywhere, in every corner of the country, and the impact that has on the land. During Peace Corps it was more just getting used to my surroundings and getting a feel for a different setting than what I grew up in.
Joining the Peace Corps.
Joy: Even going on that Peace Corps journey is interesting in that you chose to do that. What made you choose to join the Peace Corps?
Aram: I studied finance in college and I did not want to go to New York and get a job like a lot of my friends were doing. And I wanted to learn Spanish, to be honest. So my father recommended Peace Corps to me. He had actually applied to Peace Corps and didn't go, so he was kind of living vicariously through me. He was accepted to Costa Rica in the 70s and decided not to go. So it was his suggestion and I followed it, and I'm glad that I did. Really the ideas about reforestation came after Peace Corps, after getting my bearings straight here.
Finding the reforestation-as-business idea.
Joy: So after Peace Corps, what happened in between that and founding MasayaCo? How did that journey come about?
Aram: After Peace Corps I was working in a coastal town where I live now, called San Juan del Sur, and I met a French businessman who was doing reforestation as a business. He was basically taking cattle farms and growing trees on them as a long-term business plan. A guy named Clement Poncon. It was just super interesting to me, with my background in business and finance, to see a business that plants trees. After having seen Nicaragua and how much of the area was cleared for cattle farming, and how what was really driving that change from forest to cattle farms was economic forces, the idea of a business that plants trees was very intriguing to me. And it's still intriguing to me.
Over 1.3 million trees, more than 1,300 acres of land under active reforestation in Nicaragua.
Founding MasayaCo, and the missing link in the reforestation model.
Joy: And then you moved into looking at potential business models that could work. Is that how MasayaCo was founded?
Aram: Right. We started with the first idea of making just a small tree farm on a small cattle farm near San Juan. Around that same time there was a hurricane on the Atlantic coast that knocked down a forest. This was in 2008. So we got into planting trees and harvesting and processing trees at the same time. It was kind of serendipitous. This idea about reforestation, at the same time we got into processing and working with wood, and that developed over time.
That whole time, the concept in the background was wanting to create a reason to reforest. Deforestation happens for an economic reason. So for reforestation to really thrive, people need a reason to plant trees. As we started working with wood and seeing other reforestation projects, it became very clear to us that what was missing in the whole equation was a place where value was added. There were a lot of people planting trees. There were some larger reforestation projects, but they were set up to basically ship logs to Asia, ship them to India where a lot of teak is consumed. It seemed like a missing link in a business model that would drive reforestation.
So after working with wood and processing and shipping wood out, we realized that was what was missing. That's kind of where MasayaCo and Masaya Homes came from. It was really about making products from wood that comes from reforestation projects. An analogy to that is: cattle farmers need to have a slaughterhouse to sell the cattle to, or there's no reason to have cattle. Sugar farmers need a sugar mill nearby. But in Nicaragua you had people planting trees but there's no processing. That's where our business model took it one step further, to where it wasn't only growing trees but also figuring out what to do with the trees once you came to harvest.
"In order to get small farmers to plant, you have to prove to them: I can buy your trees."
— Aram Terry
MasayaCo, Masaya Homes, and Masaya Teak.
Joy: For listeners who may not be familiar, could you give us a quick overview of MasayaCo? What do you create, what are the products that are sold, and what is the core idea behind the brand?
Aram: We're a home goods company that makes furniture and prefab houses out of wood that we grow in reforestation projects. We have a big line of different hardwood furniture, and we also have these prefab houses that range from a backyard ADU up to a full residence, which we sell in California. Everything is grown in a reforestation project in Nicaragua, processed at our factory or sawmill, and then shipped out either to the US, Costa Rica, or Panama, where we operate.
Joy: And am I understanding correctly that these are three sort of independent businesses? Masaya Teak, Masaya Homes, and MasayaCo. Masaya Teak being the tree part of the story, Masaya Homes being the small homes that you build, and then MasayaCo being the consumer-facing furniture company?
Aram: That's correct, yes. They all came together through our original mission. When you're growing trees, we're typically growing them on cattle pastures. When we start a plantation project, we're planting around a thousand trees per hectare on an open field. As the trees grow up, we have to do thinnings so the trees will thicken and grow properly. If you plant them too far apart, they bush out and stay low. So you have to plant them close together, they grow up, and then you have to do thinnings.
One of the challenges with reforestation projects is what to do with these younger thinning trees. We start getting trees at year eight, year twelve, that are younger trees with more knots, more sap, and they don't really have a market. That's one of the reasons a lot of reforestation projects don't work out: they don't have an outlet for this younger wood. Our furniture and homes are designed specifically to consume this wood. That's part of the way we maximize the profitability of the plantation, so it's sustainable not just environmentally but also economically. Because that's what's driving deforestation: an economically sustainable force. We want to be environmentally and economically sustainable.
Managing 1,300 acres, and the biodiversity that returns.
Joy: Reflecting on that, it's clear that you've had to go through a long journey of learning how trees work and how forests work. Did you have to bring in expertise, or was that just the process of many years of learning?
Aram: We've learned a lot from other reforestation projects, and from other furniture brands. But a lot of it is that most companies will design a product, outsource the manufacturing, and then the manufacturer is sourcing their wood. In our case, it's our wood. So we're trying to push it all the way through our system and maximize the output and the viability of it. A lot of it has been trial and error in our own process.
Joy: It's such a unique model. I wanted to get your thoughts on how having control over that supply chain helps you manage sustainability more effectively, versus buying wood from elsewhere where you don't know a hundred percent the sustainability credentials.
Aram: That's a very important part of it. In Nicaragua there's actually a registry of plantations, and wood is very strictly controlled here. So everything that comes into our factory is from a reforestation project. It's not all our wood. Some of it is from other reforestation projects that we work with. That registry is very helpful for verifying the source. The other entity we use is FSC, the Forest Stewardship Council. We have that certification for our factory and our products, but we also buy from FSC-certified plantations if they're not our own. The other thing we do every year, and have done since inception, is in our nurseries we're usually doing anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 trees. We give trees to other farmers near us, so they're planting and growing trees, which we hope one day they will sell back to us.
Joy: And the biodiversity element, I know that's important from doing the rating. How do you manage ensuring that the forest grows with the right level of biodiversity?
Aram: Completely. We have 1,300 acres under management on our farms, and it's interesting to see firsthand what they look like. When you hear the word "plantation" you sometimes think of a corn plantation or sugar plantation. These are tropical cattle farms, usually on very hilly lands, and they usually only have around 60% pasture. Our business model is on the pasture. We're growing wood species, typically teak. So where it was once grass, it's turning into a teak stand. But the other 40% of the farm, which can be low areas or creeks or really steep areas, those are forests, whether they be secondary forests or primary forest.
So in our areas under management, I would say 30 to 40% of it is forest that's in regeneration. Some of our farms are now 18 years old, and those forests have been regenerating for another 18 years. So what was maybe a thinned-out forest is now a full forest that's had 18 more years of growth. We do have quite a bit of flora and fauna in there. We have tons of monkeys: white-face monkeys, howler monkeys, spider monkeys. We have sloths. There are even some small cats like ocelots in the farms. It's a mix of natural forest and tree stand, and that's how we can have a model that's both environmentally sustainable and can sustain itself with future harvests.
The Sustainable Jungle rating.
Joy: It's very cool. So I want to talk about our rating. MasayaCo is now a top-rated brand in our furniture category, and I wanted to share a few reflections from the rating.
When we rated MasayaCo, we were impressed by the depth and authenticity of the business model. In particular, your commitment to reforestation stood out as the most impactful part of the model. The Seed to Seat® approach is a rare example of true regenerative practice, not just planting trees by a third party. It's also clear that you have a strong focus on fair employment, local craftsmanship, and providing meaningful economic opportunities. Your vertically integrated supply chain, from planting trees through to producing finished products, creates consistent work and real community impact. And the design and craftsmanship of the MasayaCo furniture speaks for itself: high-quality, durable, heirloom pieces that move beyond short-term consumption.
So from every angle it was clear that MasayaCo isn't just trying to do less harm but actively building a better system. Sustainability and social impact have clearly been foundational to MasayaCo from the beginning. Can you walk us through how your practices have evolved over time to meet these ambitions?
Aram: From inception it started as a reforestation project, trying to figure out how to make reforestation a profitable business, so more people would do it. It was always about sustainability, but the practices in the model have changed a lot over time as we figured out the business model all the way through to e-commerce and delivering furniture to people's houses in the US.
There was an epiphany at one point early on, which I mentioned earlier about the value-added part. In order to get small farmers here to plant, and to have a reason to plant, you would have to prove to them: I can buy your trees. Otherwise they don't want to plant, only to find out 20 years later, "what do I do with these trees?" That's happened a lot here. There was a lot more reforestation going on from around 2005 to 2015, and it's curtailed because it's kind of been accepted that it's not what people expected. They don't really make a profit off of it, so they inevitably turn that land back to some usage that's profitable. The idea of the value-added, actually turning it into a product, was the biggest change that happened. From "oh let's just grow some trees and sell them later" to making ADUs all the way up to people's houses.
Joy: And that's convinced those people who are growing trees on their land that this model works, presumably.
Aram: We have supply partners that are actually having a much worse time with their export of logs now, and are very happy to support our model. We make it a lot easier for them. Another thing that's really hard: if you are exporting logs, there's a container shipment in there somewhere, and that container shipment can vary in price. Three times, four times, five times. That can totally change somebody's business model. When you're planting a tree and 20 years later you're going to sell it, that's a huge risk factor.
When you're exporting wood you have a customer, and they don't want everything. If the wood's short, if it's knotty. One of the other problems with the plantations was how much wood was left behind, and what to do with that. Since we're making furniture and houses out of laminated wood, which is small pieces, we can also take in almost any size or age of log. Our reforestation suppliers and our own plantations benefit from that. It goes way into the weeds on how to design these products so we're using everything.
Solar power and waste-to-energy.
Aram: Another part of it is any waste, sawdust, or branches go to a biomass energy plant in Nicaragua. Even the offcuts that come from our process are used to create green energy. That's another thing we've added on during the process.
Joy: And I noted from the rating there's quite a bit of solar power use with the kilns, and you're moving to an increasingly renewable-powered energy model.
Aram: Right. We have a project into the bank this year to turn the factory totally onto solar power. Because we only work in the daytime. We don't have any night shifts. When we're working, the sun's out, and the sun's very powerful here, so we can run our whole process on solar. About 80% of our energy comes from solar.
Abril Zepeda, MasayaCo co-founder. She turned the plain woven chair into the colorful patterns MasayaCo is known for today.
Meeting Abril and the origin of the handwoven chairs.
Joy: On the design, I just wanted to touch on that. Who is responsible for the designs, because they are gorgeous. I love MasayaCo. Beautiful, minimalist, highly stylish. You can imagine them lasting an eternity, in terms of classic style. So who's responsible for that?
Aram: I skipped over that part in the company history, but it's one of the most important parts. As we were starting to make furniture, say 2012, going from just milling wood into making some furniture for local projects, I met my wife Abril. She's from Masaya, Nicaragua, which is where our company gets its name. I had a friend who wanted a woven chair for his hotel project at the beach. So we made the frame, and I was in Masaya trying to find hammock weavers to weave it. Masaya is an artisan town where there's a furniture neighborhood, a shoemaking neighborhood, and a hammock neighborhood.
At the same time I was starting to date Abril. Coming from that artisan background, being around her, she was starting to make sandals out of the same kind of hammock material, leather and cords. She said, "I can take you to the hammock weavers and we'll figure out how to weave these chairs." Then she asked me to leave some of the frames at her house, and she started bringing the hammock weavers over to her house, playing around and figuring out the patterns. That was 2012. By 2014, she had some really cool-looking patterns, which is where we got our lucky break into the US market. My brother Justin, who's also a co-founder of the company, put them up on Etsy, and we started selling the chairs on Etsy, and they really started getting some velocity. That's where the furniture brand came from. It's called MasayaCo because the first pieces we designed, by my wife Abril, were actually made in Masaya and woven by hammock weavers.
Joy: I love that story. And she does a great job. The designs are really stunning.
Aram: We wouldn't be where we are without her.
One of MasayaCo's handwoven chairs. Still a signature product more than a decade after Abril developed the first one.
Milestones, LA fire rebuilds, and what's next.
Joy: Looking back, is there a particular milestone or project that you're most proud of achieving?
Aram: Crossing the line on a million trees. That was a milestone that happened a couple of years ago. Our goal moving forward as we grow would be to plant a million trees a year. That's going to take some more growth, some more sales, to drive the reforestation and the demand for the trees. Another thing that's very rewarding is just the physical effect of the reforestation. We have around seven farms now, so I don't get to all of them every month. But when you go back and you haven't been to a farm in seven or eight months, and it's just noticeably cooler, shadier, the trees are much bigger, and in some cases we're pulling trees out of those farms and turning them into furniture. Seeing something that was totally denuded turned back into a forest, and just seeing that growth, that's always one of the most rewarding things.
Joy: Your future goals from MasayaCo, you mentioned the one million trees a year would be an amazing milestone. Is there anything else that you're really hoping, five years from now, you would love to have achieved?
Aram: Our end goal is to plant as many trees as possible. I would love it to be where the brand really takes off and we're really pushing more on the planting side. So what does that mean on the commercial end? We have a store in Berkeley where we're selling the ADUs and the furniture in the same showroom, in the Bay Area market. Opening another store like that in LA, or somewhere else where we can do all of our products together, that's another short-term goal for us. We have our first sale in LA, which is actually a fire rebuild. So we hope that we can move what we're doing down to LA within the next year or two.
Joy: You can imagine with global sort of housing crises, there must be an opportunity for Masaya Homes to fill some part of the market, especially rebuilds.
Aram: Another big part of the rebuilds is the sustainability aspect of the prefabricated houses. You mentioned the furniture being forever furniture, instead of fast furniture that you throw away, something that goes out of style, something that's cheap. We want something you're going to keep forever, and that in the long run is cheaper and more sustainable. With the homes, their sustainability aspect, beyond the fact that they're made out of reforested wood, is the fact that they have very little waste. We ship up these panels. They're already pre-cut, already finished, and they assemble on site. A typical construction, they're bringing trucks in from Home Depot or wherever, piling up materials, filling up a dumpster, sending the dumpster out. That aspect of construction is very much reduced with our model. We can get in and out of your backyard much quicker. Instead of being back there for a year, we're in and out in a few weeks for a small unit, or two to four months for a larger home. And much less waste. Our wood waste stays at the factory and is turned into energy. That's another advantage we have with the prefabricated home design.
Joy: That's huge. We built our home here in Australia and the waste was horrifying. Are you thinking about more global expansion, or sticking to the US market for now?
Aram: We would like to start selling in Europe at some point. We've had interest for both the furniture and the homes. But in the short term we're focusing specifically on California, because there's such a need, such a crisis there for the homes, and my business partner Olin is based in Santa Rosa and he puts them together. The whole part of our business model is that it's turnkey, and we're putting these houses together in people's backyards. That requires our construction aspect, so there's only so much area we can cover with that. For right now, that is California. We will look at hospitality-type projects for the homes. We are doing them in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We're doing hospitality, hotel cabins, that kind of thing, out of the homes. But in terms of other regions for the homes, I would say it's a couple years off.
Joy: Well I look forward to when they arrive in Australia.
Aram: You never know. We can live in hope.
Joy: And Masaya Teak. You mentioned more trees is obviously a big goal, but is there anything else you'd like to share on plans for Masaya Teak?
Aram: Masaya Teak, that brand was created basically to sell the lumber products that we have. The houses are made of lumber products. They have cladding, decking, flooring, and ceiling. We also sell those products separately. So we'll just sell decking or cladding or flooring separately to builders. That's where the Masaya Teak line is.
A Masaya Home Model L. Panelized, factory-built from reforested teak, installed in weeks instead of months.
Building a regenerative business.
Joy: Zooming out a little bit, how do you see the broader role of regenerative businesses evolving in years ahead?
Aram: Hopefully expanded. To me, the most important issue that's happening in the world is what humans have done to the earth in the last 200 years, and continue to do. The world still has net forest loss every year, around four million hectares of forest loss, plus the amount of carbon that's being emitted, which every year is accumulating. In my opinion, photosynthesis is something that nature has given us to combat climate change. Trees using the sun's power to grab carbon dioxide, release oxygen, and store carbon in the wood is a very simple natural solution to combat climate change. It seems simple, kind of middle-school ecology, but photosynthesis is a very powerful process that we should be using more to combat climate change.
In my opinion, what we need, and where I don't see a lot of focus, is on massive reforestation. Whether it's B-corp models like ours, or models that are financed by carbon credits, we need to be planting more trees. Everyone does. That will help counteract what we're all doing to the world.
"Photosynthesis is something that nature has given us to combat climate change."
— Aram Terry
Joy: Running a truly values-led business like your Masaya businesses can be obviously a lot harder than just taking shortcuts. From your experience, do you have any reflections on what it really takes to build a company that stays true to its mission?
Aram: If I shared it with myself, the risk would be that I wouldn't do it. But the vertical integration is not to be underestimated, and that is our biggest challenge. We're a small company that's basically seven different companies: tree planting and forestry management, sawmill, lumber processing, product design and prototyping, furniture manufacturing, homes manufacturing, e-commerce, and then homes building. It's a lot of different things going on to manage for a small team. Luckily, we have a very great team, very entrepreneurial, up for the challenge, and they like all the things going on. But it does get hectic. There are a lot of moving parts for us to manage. Seed to Seat is a beautiful little slogan, but in reality there are a lot of moving parts that can get stressful to manage. That's been the hardest part.
Whereas another company will design the product, outsource the manufacturing, so they've contained all that risk into other companies and the delivery price, and then they can focus on marketing and distribution. That basically cuts the amount of activities in half. But in our case, we're a small company and there are a lot of different separate activities going on, and a lot of skills to have in a small team.
Joy: That's a lot of skill sets to cover. That's no easy feat when finding good people is hard.
Aram: Since we started making product, we're 12 or 13 years into it. So it has taken time to learn all these processes. You could call it a startup, but it's been going on for 12 years of learning. That's something that I guess I underestimated, and continue to underestimate as we try to grow the business.
Advice for conscious consumers.
Joy: Thinking a bit more philosophically about your end market, the consumers, how important do you think it is for consumers to think about where their dollars are actually going? What advice would you give to people who want to shop more thoughtfully, especially when it comes to things like furniture purchases?
Aram: Having been in this for several years running a sustainable business, I'm fairly disappointed with how much emphasis people put on true sustainability in their products. Information sources like yours are very important that really go into the nitty gritty and look at where products come from and how things are made. I think that's very important, and that people should do that more if we really want to be sustainable. The word "greenwashing" has become even cliche, but there's a lot of it out there. Most people just want to check the ethical, sustainable box but don't really look into the true background on the products. That's where we're not really solving the core problems, which is fighting climate change. The more you know about what you're buying, the better.
If everyone heard one thing.
Joy: If you could have one piece of information or advice truly heard and understood and felt by every single person on the planet, what would it be?
Aram: Buy wood. Wood is carbon captured by photosynthesis. If everything were made out of wood, if high-rise buildings were made out of wood, that's more carbon captured, more trees planted. It is the best renewable building resource. It seems simple, but it's not what happens. There's a lot of concrete, which is not sustainable at all. Steel and other things are what people build out of. Contrary to what a lot of people think, that making things out of wood drives deforestation, the US, Canada, and other places have sustainable forestry practices where large areas are constantly reforested and used to grow wood. That's capturing carbon and fighting climate change. So I think it's a simple thing, but we should all buy more wood products where possible.
Where to find MasayaCo, and one closing thought.
Joy: For listeners who want to support or learn more about MasayaCo, Masaya Homes, or Masaya Teak, where is the best place for them to find you?
Aram: We have a showroom in Berkeley in the Bay Area, where we have the homes and the furniture on display. We have stores in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama where we also sell. And our Instagram and YouTube pages: you can look up MasayaCo. The furniture is on masayaco.com and the homes are on masayahomes.com. For e-commerce, we are available in all of the US.
Joy: Is there anything else that you'd like to leave listeners with before we close off?
Aram: I feel like there's kind of a waning interest in climate change. It feels like there was a lot of effort made to combat it, and now everyone's backing down, and the problem's not getting any better. If anything it's getting worse. It's worrisome to see the way trends are going. I think people who care about it need to do as much as possible to fight climate change. Whether it's buying products, or voting, or whatever it is, it's not a problem that's going away just because we're bored and tired of listening to it. So I guess that would be my final message.
"It's not a problem that's going away just because we're bored and tired of listening to it."
— Aram Terry
Joy: Thank you so much for sharing your story and the incredible work that you and the Masaya team are doing.
Aram: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure being here.
Related reading from the MasayaCo journal.
Reforestation Through Design: The MasayaCo Story on the Climate Changers Podcast. Aram and business partner Olin Cohan on the Climate Changers podcast: the same story from a different angle, including the Peace Corps years, the Tubbs Fire, and the Seed to Seat® model.
Inside MasayaCo's Teak Reforestation Program. An on-the-ground look at what planting and managing more than 1,300 acres in Nicaragua actually involves, with forest managers Noel and Bryan Lopez.
Growing with the Grain: Khurland Lopez on Shaping Design. The craft and design side of the story, with the Nicaraguan artisans and designers who shape every piece by hand.
What FSC Certification Actually Means for Solid Teak. The chain of custody, why plantation-grown teak is different from old-growth, and how to verify a supplier's claims yourself.
Seed to Seat®. MasayaCo's program page, with more on the reforestation model, the trees planted, and the land under active management.
By MasayaCo Editorial, based on the Sustainable Jungle podcast with Aram Terry.
