Importance Of Effective Marketing Strategies For A Wood Marketing Company
Steve Larosiliere
April 24, 2024
“What if you brand yourself as this artist and this artistic woodworker and they’ve seen it repetitively from you, that you’re doing something that nobody else seems to be doing, you’ll be viewed as an artist. [Then] when you submit your price to them, there’ll be very little room for haggling or negotiations.”
That’s Donnie Galli, owner of Designs by Donnie, the Destin Florida-based Furniture Company. Donnie’s work is hard to categorize, it’s large and imposing giant timbers with rustic flavors, but there is also a delicateness to it.
Donnie has an artistic sensibility and works with flowing shapes and lines that seem almost impossible to make with the materials and the scale that he does. Donnie was a businessman before he became a furniture maker. After each of his businesses failed, instead of giving up, he learned from them and became stronger after each one. Still, a hard-working attitude doesn’t always get you to where you need to go. Donnie found himself with a wealth of knowledge, but very little else to show for his work. He turned to furniture not out of passion, but out of necessity.
As Donnie says, this is the first business that he’s done that’s actually been successful. So he’s pretty stoked about it. It makes him feel like it’s the one that was meant to be. Donnie is in his mid 40’s now but started this wood company eight years ago, it was pretty much a passion and a skill set that he didn’t even know that he had. Donnie recalls he didn’t even know how to establish a woodworking business. When he got into it he was actually working as a property manager in Destin for a local resort company. During the holiday season, however, he was let go.
After being let go Donnie tried to find another job but was unsuccessful and after a few months of being stressed and depressed about it, his wife posed him a great suggestion! She asked him to go to the garage and make a table. So out in the garage with basic hand tools, Donnie made a really cool console table that blew his mind and was the beginning of his real woodworking experience.
Even further back than that, however, Donnie’s grandfather inspired him with woodworking and being an artist. As a young child, he taught Donnie a lot about reclaimed wood and building birdhouses as well as fence repair. Donnie started eight businesses before he found his way to furniture making. Ethan notes how he shows an extremely good work ethic with his persistence. After he made that first piece of furniture for his wife, she said, “You know what, we should try selling this.” And it sold very quickly.
So Donnie jumped on Google, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, you name it. He hopped on all those platforms and started digging in deep, trying to see what was out there in the furniture world. The one thing Donnie saw in common from woodworkers, carpenters, and big-box furniture stores was the lack of large-scale furniture. So he immediately got his notepad out and checked the box marked “go big or go home.”
Donnie continued his research by Googling everything he could possibly imagine. The one thing that came up that was most in common was rustic, the people didn’t want glossy and shiny, they wanted something more natural. So he decided that he was going to go big, and he was going to go rustic. Once he got going on that mindset he discovered his love for building giant-sized furniture pieces.
Ethan then asks Donnie about his strategy at the beginning when he was just starting to get his name out there and get his furniture noticed. Donnie explains that his previous businesses taught him the value of face-to-face contact and getting in front of the right customers. He created an oversized four-by-six postcard. It had his logo and contact information on the back, and three photos of work that he had done. Donnie notes that at that point, he had only completed three pieces, making those his only three photos.
Thanks to his exhaustive Google research, he knew he wanted to start with interior designers because they work with high-end clients, and he knew he wanted to reach clients with big money. To achieve that goal, Donnie Googled the addresses of every interior designer, ranging from basically Pensacola to Panama City. Though he did not go to every single one on the list, he literally went from store to store, walking in introducing himself, and giving them his postcards.
Donnie realized that rather than giving these leads a business card or some generic flyer, he thought a really cool glossy postcard would do the trick. He hoped that if it looked cute enough, they would just leave it on their desk for a little while, versus a business card that they might throw in the trash can or take a thumbtack and put it on a board with 9000 other business cards. This process relied upon the same face-to-face contact he had known earlier in his life and it was extremely effective in getting those early clients.
Ethan notes that people aren’t reaching out to Donnie for a small side table or something dainty, they recognize they’re purchasing something large and impressive. He asks how Donnie handles the inevitable challenge of pricing his unusual products.
Donnie explains that most woodworkers consider themselves artisans or artists. As an artist, you really hold yourself in a different type of light where you want to give somebody something really amazing but you don’t want to beat them up on a huge hefty price tag. When he first started, that was his motto. “I’m going to give people the highest quality and the coolest designs for the lowest prices.”
Donnie quickly elaborates that he was wrong. One of the biggest mistakes furniture businesses make is pricing all their stuff too low thinking they’re going to get more sales. The problem is that most businesses start out as a one-person show, which means they can’t bang out two dozen dining tables quickly. If they can’t do that, then they can’t sell low.
Donnie then adds that he really branded himself in the beginning with his style of furniture. He really wanted to impress his potential clients, so he wanted to be branded as an artist because he knew that if he could brand himself as an artist, he would get paid way more than if he branded himself as a woodworker.
He adds that woodworking is awesome and he considers himself a woodworker but when he talks about pricing, he considers himself an artist. He prices his work based on what he needs and what he thinks the piece is actually worth. Donnie explains that it’s easy to get lost in the actual technical and physical building of a piece. When you present your piece to your customer, it’s magical for them, they don’t see the technical aspect of building a piece of furniture, they just see the finished piece. To them, it’s art.
Ethan then asks Donnie for some final thoughts to share with somebody who’s just starting out. Somebody who thinks that they want to make that jump into building furniture, but they don’t know if it’s right for them, or somebody who’s in the middle of it, they’ve been doing this for a while now, but they’re just looking to take their company to the next level.
Donnie starts out by saying that while it may sound a little cliche, he has a saying that is simply, “you got this.” He adds that he means that very seriously. Starting a furniture business is not going to be all flowers and rainbows, it’s gonna be an emotional rollercoaster. He believes that it’s possible to skip through many hardships by doing lots of research, but there will be trials and you’re going to lose some money on some pieces.
Start out where you are with what you have today. Start out in your garage, as a side hustle, make a postcard, make a brochure, whatever you do, get going face to face, building your brand in your local community. After all, that’s where you’re going to start selling your furniture. You have to start somewhere and your local community is where it’s going to be. Keep the mental focus, stay through it. Don’t give up, keep charging forward, focus hard on your pricing.
Designs by Donnie: www.designsbydonnie.com
Instagram: @designsbydonnie
This episode is brought to you by Jobber – getjobber.com/ethan
