Steven Rossi

Steven Rossi started Ipe Woods USA with a simple idea and not much else: get real tropical hardwood into people's hands mill-direct, without the layers of middlemen that inflate the price and blur where the wood actually came from. What began as a startup run out of long days and longer phone calls has grown into one of the most recognized names in exotic hardwood in America.

Today that wood crosses oceans. Containers move from mill to jobsite for projects in Japan and China, for amusement parks and skyscrapers, for boardwalks the public walks every day without ever wondering where the boards came from. Steven has quietly supplied decks and homes for professional athletes and for a handful of the wealthiest people in the world — names he doesn't drop, because the wood was never the point of the story.

The scale is easy to underestimate. There aren't many people in America who haven't walked on, leaned against, or run a hand across a piece of wood that came out of Steven's dream — and almost none of them know it. He likes it that way.

Steven still shows up. It isn't unusual for him to get on a plane to see a project somewhere across the country or the world, just to stand on the deck and look at the grain in person. He reads every photo customers send in. And of all of it — the towers, the parks, the estates — the one that means the most is still the dream home or the backyard deck someone worked and waited a lifetime to build.

He leads Ipe Woods USA's sourcing relationships with mills across Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, focused on legal, selective-harvest supply and full chain-of-custody documentation under the Lacey Act and CITES, and he writes and reviews the company's species specifications, grading standards, and installation guidance himself. The love Steven has for lumber runs through every part of how Ipe Woods USA works.