Importance Of Effective Marketing Strategies For A Wood Marketing Company
Steve Larosiliere
April 24, 2024
Steve Larosiliere
Welcome to Building a Furniture Brand with Ethan Abramson. This episode features Ramon Valdez, the owner of the northern New Mexico-based Ramon Valdez Fine Furniture. Ramon has been in the furniture business for over 40 years, and in that time he has worked in every aspect of the industry from running a 30 person cabinet company to operating a one-person boutique furniture shop.
With that depth and breadth of experience across the industry, Ramon and Ethan have plenty to talk about. They discuss not only the technical side of the business but also what it is like to make an entire life within the industry.
Ramon’s journey in the furniture industry started back in 1980 when he was in high school. He went to work for a cabinet shop that his brother was employed at during the summer months to make some spending money. While he had fun at that job, at the time Ramon didn’t think that it would be his future. However, two years later as a senior in high school, he signed up for some classes that fell through and wound up working for a cabinet shop again to finalize his credits where he finally fell in love with the work.
The cabinet shop was Ramon’s passion for quite a while, but after a few years, he decided to open his own shop where he specialized in commercial casework. Although the work itself did not give him the greatest chance to flex his creative side, he enjoyed the challenge of trying to make processes more efficient, and he later transitioned into building homes and erecting commercial buildings.
“I was kind of all over the place at the time just doing whatever came through the door. Then I started to realize I could focus on, and pick and choose what I wanted to do. It started going toward the higher-end cabinetry pieces that we were making, credenzas and built-ins, and that kind of evolved into true furniture with quality joinery. I really liked that, and I did it for about six, seven years.”
In the years that followed, Ramon studied at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado, an art school with a phenomenal woodworking program where he learned the art of marquetry. The higher learning gave Ramon a renewed sense of vigor and he began selling his work in galleries and he was selling so well that he struggled to keep up at some points and began to feel a bit overwhelmed.
This feeling led to Ramon getting a bit burnt out by working all the time even though he loved what he was doing. Shortly after, one of his brothers who owned a big commercial case workshop asked if Ramon would be willing to go work for him. Initially, Ramon declined, saying that he still loved what he was doing in spite of the stress, but he was building several speculative pieces which didn’t always sell as well as his other work which created gullies where he wasn’t selling anything.
His brother continued to send better and better offers with the intention of Ramon becoming their production manager. The company was struggling to keep up and they weren’t growing, and eventually, Ramon decided it could be a good challenge and foster growth in himself, so he accepted. Ramon’s expertise in improving efficiency paid off and the company leaned on him for many years as his brother handed off the reins to him, and Ramon began to feel a great sense of accomplishment with this new role.
“As I mentioned initially, I was overwhelmed. But I realized I could delegate authority and responsibility to these key employees. I started to notice a new sense of pride and all this fresh desire to make the shop run more efficiently. I started to build on that, and it was amazing. I could utilize each one of these employees with their skills and strengths, which dramatically lightened my load and made me think, okay, I’m onto something here.”
Over his many years in the industry, Ramon has handled business from both the artistic and commercial sides, and while those sides possess conflicting ideologies sometimes, they are both an integral part of who he is as a maker. Currently, Ramon views himself primarily as an artist and his furniture as functional art, but he has managed to strike a balance between the artistic and business sides in a way that many others struggle with.
Ramon advises people who want to build furniture and also make a lot of money to instead go find a way to make money and then jump back into furniture after the fact. For himself, Ramon knew he wanted to build furniture, but he also knew he didn’t want it to eat up all his time. Although he enjoyed the year that he built and sold full time through the galleries, he realized that wasn’t sustainable for him, especially in the modern era.
“Everything has changed since then. I think there are more furniture makers now than ever that are being discovered via the internet and social media. I truly believe that’s why a lot of the prices of lumber and exotic species have gone up because there’s more people doing that, there’s a bigger demand. It ties right in with demand and supply.
I think it’s also amazing that there’s more handmade now because of social media people like wow, look what this guy is doing. That’s cool. He or she starts doing that, and they evolve that into a business. I think that’s an amazing thing when you can find something that you love.”
A part of spending as many years in the industry as Ramon has means that he has heaps of wisdom to share with others in the business. When prompted by Ethan, Ramon starts by advising listeners who are interested in becoming a furniture maker to either have the skills already, take some classes, and really learn about all of the processes that you can.
He believes it’s vital to learn the fundamental skill of how to sharpen your tools. Ramon is not a hand tool purist by any means, he notes that sometimes high-end machines are the right choice, and sometimes joinery is the best method. Ultimately, Ramon believes that whatever tool works best is the right tool for the job, and those key components come from experience and learning what is really important for any given job.
“Learning all this stuff takes experience and you can get past a lot of the pitfalls or learning bad habits by going to a school or class. It doesn’t have to be a whole year long, that would be very expensive, but you can take classes and they’re available all over the country and over the Internet. So taking classes and learning some areas that you’re not quite efficient at yet can really propel you past some of those blocks that you normally would have.”
Website: ramonvaldezfinefurniture.com
Instagram: @ramonartful
