This past year has been a wild ride! Even ignoring all that has taken place throughout the nation and the world during the past year, things have been simultaneously exciting and scary around our neck of the woods. Way back in March, Jared Patchin decided to take the plunge and turned J. Alexander Fine Woodworking […]
An interesting thing happened to me the other day. I awoke on Sunday morning at about the usual time, 6:45 am, which is when my 2 year-old son decides the day should start, and checked to see if I had any business e-mail. Lo and behold I had a message from a wholesale client of […]
We receive regular newsletter e-mails from a business consulting company in the silicon valley are called Trizle. Funny name for a consulting company, but the newsletters they send out are packed full of good, solid, timeless business advice The latest newsletter was entitled “How to Run Your Business When The Economy Sucks!”.
We really liked this […]
The custom furniture business is just plain fun. I get to make a living by doing one of my favorite things, designing and building furniture. Each project is unique, even in a small ways, from the ones that I have built before. A wide range of mental and technical skills have to be developed to […]
A few entries ago I talked about how I began this business by selling to different wholesale accounts, such as interior designers and remodeling contractors in the various markets around me. Well, I am now going to talk about how this approach has worked for me over the past six months. The major advantage of […]
A couple of entries ago I talked about how I identified who my potential clients were and how I would contact them. Given that many potential clients would be working with interior designers and remodeling contractors, it was necessary for me to begin to make some calls, get my name out in the marketplace, and […]
As I said in yesterdays post, I have been working on some new marketing material with a friend, Nathan Barry from Unattended Media. I figured I would preempt the flood of requests that I know are on their way, and post them here for all to take a look at.
This is the front and back […]
Today I figured I would talk about what life has been like the past month or so for me running a small and brand-new custom woodworking business.
First off, everyone knows that the economy has slowed down considerably, and may or may not be nearing a recession. The good thing for me is that I began […]
As a woodworker who is trying to make a living selling high-end custom furniture, I had better know who my target markets are. If I don’t, I am liable to waste time and money chasing after people who were never a potential client in the first place, and time and money are two things […]
As promised at the end of the last blog entry, I will be talking about how I am going about selling myself and my work.
Some people may wonder why I add the “selling myself” part in with the “selling my product.” It’s because I build custom furniture, not off the shelf, stock products. […]