This may not be the right community to post this in; it’s at least obliquely involved with woodworking.
I intend to hang a shingle as a furniture maker. Yes I know I know “Beware turning a hobby into a job because it’ll suck the joy out” before the pandemic I was working in a custom build shop, about the only thing I didn’t build for customers was furniture, and I kinda miss the pipeline.
In fact, I’d kind of like to find several other craftsmen of various flavors and open an “artisan shop”, where, say, a table I built is used to display vases the potter made, and so on like that.
I got, or rather built, that custom building job at a makerspace in the city, and I could get this venture off the ground with a quick message to the General Slack channel. Not only was the place full of craftsmen and artisans but it was plugged into the entrepreneurial world, people would pour out of the woodwork to either join up or point me to resources. Where I’m at now there’s just none of that.
I think I’m at the point where I just have to build something and put it up for sale. Just…before we bother with business plans and branding and logos and social media and all that crap, I need to open a personal Etsy account or walk into a local consignment shop and sell a thing I made out of wood just to prove I can actually do it.
This may wait until spring at this point; between a family member in hospice and the winter…
Can it be someone else’s turn to talk now?
It’s certainly possible to do this. Just beware that building furniture and woodworking is a very different skill than running a business.
Running a business means endless sales and marketing and customer service and follow ups and dealing with vendors and stocking supplies, managing inventory, doing taxes, handling finances, managing partners and employees, renting space, maintenance, payroll, etc.
Just be realistic about how much of the job is actually building things and how much of it is going to be about… everything else.
Dealing with vendors, stocking supplies, managing inventory, this stuff I’ve done before and in fact would take back up vendors I used to use in my previous line of work.
I figure it would be awhile of selling on platforms like Etsy or local consignment shops or swap meets, working out of my back yard wood shed by myself, before taking on a lot of that other stuff. I don’t want to do much in the way of custom building; I’m not setting foot in a customer’s house to build cabinets or “accent walls” or whatever else, I’m not going to sit down and try to understand what it is you’re asking of me, I will accept “Could I have this table but 2 inches longer so that it fits perfectly in this space I have?”
A lot of people talk about Facebook and Instagram as sales vectors. I would rather not have a business than open an account on any of Meta’s platforms. The first thing anyone tells you anymore “Spend 94 hours a day posting on Facebook or Instagram about it.”
NO.
Youtube, Bluesky, maybe what arises to replace Tiktok when it’s banned next month, but absolutely not Facebook or Xitter. That’s a hard, veiny, throbbing, deep purple NO.
I’m sure there’s different ways to generate sales, hopefully you can find something that will work for you. Some kind of platform to get the word out will help. Maybe you can find a niche and develop a reputation through word of mouth. You’ll need some kind of sales and marketing strategy, whatever it is.
It sounds like you have experience with the back of the house stuff. Logistics, supply chain, production, etc. Customer facing side is very different. Just be realistic about what that’s going to take.
My job title was project manager. There were times when I WAS the back of house. I usually did communicate with customers as to what they wanted us to build, communicating with customers as their project progressed and such. I wasn’t really involved much in the business’ marketing efforts though.
I’m not opposed to a social media presence in general but there are specific companies I will not work with because they are baby punching evil. I’ve been thinking about what a Youtube channel attached to this business might look like. I consume a lot of shop videos, from the usual Woodtube suspects to old episodes of The New Yankee Workshop to This Old Tony, but I imagine the people who spend $1600 on bedside tables don’t care about my opinions about parallel jaw clamps or router table lifts. I think I can do shop shenanigans because that’s who I am, so what kind of shop shenanigans would the Pinterest crowd be interested in watching? There’s that guy who does the space planet spray paintings, the “Shasha!” guy, do I make my version of that? Vlogs of customer builds?
Yeah I get it, I don’t really have personal social media accounts, but I’d open them for a business.
If you’re going to go the content production route then that’s another whole ball of wax. Can be very good for business if it takes off, but you’d have to figure out your strategy for that and execute on it. Customer builds or just stuff you’re building in general can be good. It shows off the process and generates trust/desirability. If someone buys a custom piece, it’s kind of nice to have its story fully documented.
But content production, editing, publishing and social media interaction takes time, skill & effort. It can be quite the commitment to do it right.
I don’t have anything useful to contribute, but I’m wishing you luck and I hope you’re able to get the things you’re looking for out of it :)
Is it lack of time keeping you from opening that etsy? You could say ‘on may 1st, i’ll take those first steps’ or whenever you think you’ll have time. I’ve written tons, but never tried to publish out of fear, so if it’s a psychological block, i get it, but I can’t help, lol.
i do have an llc, so if it’s anxiety about that end, i can say that part’s manageable. I got a book about it for my state at the library when I started, so I wouldn’t miss any legal steps.
Well some of it is I’m getting more and more skeptical about Etsy itself; so I hear the platform has been going a bit downhill, trying to slide from the storefront for handmade craft goods and into Temu for Pinterest users.
Boiling down several paragraphs, what little market research I’ve done has consisted of looking around at things I think I can build and seeing what’s out there and what prices they’re selling for. End tables make the most sense, a lot of projects the math doesn’t work, I’m not sure how people are turning a profit at the prices they’re asking without mass production. But I know I can build an end table and comfortably sell it for the prices I see asked on the platform. I have a lot of questions like “will people buy an $800 table from a brand new seller?”
I would have to actually make the table. I have a very small wood shop, I cannot set up my table saw indoors there’s simply no room, so I have to set it up outside. It is currently winter; it’s rather cold to be in bare hands and short sleeves to safely run power tools, the days are short, it’s colder out than the “apply between” ranges printed on my bottles of glue and cans of finish. It may be March or April before my next big project.
I’ve also had the idea of looking around at local consignment shops and stuff like that, to see about selling locally, and on that I’ve gotten as far as writing down several business names and addresses.
Etsy isn’t great these days, yeah. I’ve been looking for better alternatives (for buying xmas gifts ), and there are some, but I haven’t given them a shot yet.
Woodworking does seem tougher for selling online than, say, wirewrapping (have a relative trying to figure out selling those). I see facebook pages and personal websites for those sorts of local businesses, instead of etsy. A local blacksmith has an instagram. If you looked to build a website with pictures of old pieces, that’d give you a link to put on a card where anyone can see what you’re capable of. Eventually with a contact form for whatever you want to sell (custom orders? small batches of a similar item?) when you’re at that point.
The gallery here is nice: https://ridderworks.com/
My father talks about starting a business in a new town. He sent out a thousand mailers in the late 70’s and got one customer who reccomended him around to her friends. That first customer or store buyer is tough. My business had a slow period and we advertised in a local mailer. It was expensive and we got one call out of it, lol. We’re also temperature limited (house painting) and winters can get slow.
Thinking about working locally, i get some good business out of local paint and hardware stores. If you want to do custom work, they often keep business cards for recomendations when customers ask. For singular, prebuilt pieces, I also see small furniture pieces for sale from local sellers at gift shops.
Any local farmer’s market? https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/34qfhi/thoughts_after_my_first_farmers_market If you get some small stock and sell here, you can give out cards at the same time.
Getting started is tough, but unfortunately I enjoy spitballing this sort of thing. Feel free to ignore any and all ideas that sound useless, and especially ignore any that are irrelevant to your situation, lol.
Not sure I mentioned it but I have been looking into local consignment shops and that sort of thing, I’ve searched up several, looked at their websites to get a feel for what their business is like, and I’ve been preparing to walk in there with questions like “What sells in this area? What just flies off the shelves? What would you want me to sell here?”
Anyway I think it’s important to spend at least a little time as a “hobbyist that sells some of his work” because it’s easy to get into that level of “What about import duties on international orders” kind of crap. I need to build and sell something.
Good luck!
Not sure on what country you’re in, but look into the ramifications about selling something as an individual compared to spending a bit of money to sell things as a corporation.
Furniture companies have been sued for furniture falling on and killing children, which is something that you don’t want to be liable for.
Also, if you have more than one person involved with selling things such as an artisan shop, and you’ll want more than a hand-shake deal about things like payment, hours required, pricing, etc.
Also, there could be tax reasons, depending on how much you sell.
…but maybe that’s what you mean by “business plans”
Furniture companies have been sued for furniture falling on and killing children, which is something that you don’t want to be liable for.
You have talked me out of building anything for any reason ever again, I’m probably destroying the things I have built already and absolutely destroying my tools.
It’s not my intent to discourage you! I just mean it’s one thing for Furniture Co. to get sued out of existence, it’s another thing entirely for Captain Aggravated (the actual human) to get sued out of house and home.
I know that for large pieces, as long as you provide instructions and sufficient hardware to attach it to a wall (like an L-bracket), it also reduces the chances that you (or the company) could be found at fault.
It’s very not likely to happen, but if something awful happens, you do want at least some barrier between yourself and litigation.
Again, not trying to get you to stop building things, just encouraging you to CYA.
Yeah no I’m done. I don’t think I can run the risk of building a table for a family member in case a friend of that family member walks past and stubs a toe on it. I’m never building anything of any kind ever again, not in this failed society.
