Importance Of Effective Marketing Strategies For A Wood Marketing Company
Steve Larosiliere
April 24, 2024
“There’s no sense in struggling my entire life to build something and then just go bankrupt because I haven’t been charging enough the whole time.” – Justin Nelson
Hello and welcome to Building a Furniture Brand with Ethan Abramson, the show that talks about the business behind the furniture business. Justin Nelson, the owner of Fernweh Woodworking is the guest on today’s episode. Justin started his furniture business in 2017. Known for his meticulously crafted solid-wood American-made furniture, Justin has developed a strong name for himself in the industry. Right now he’s reached a real turning point in his career. He recently took on his second full time employee, his shop is turning out the most work it ever has, and even though his furniture collection has been incredibly successful for years, he finally feels he’s rounding the corner from just hustling daily to being a sustainable business.
Throughout this episode, Ethan and Justin spoke about how he started out pricing his furniture, his thoughts on working with showrooms, wholesalers, and designers, how he took the plunge into hiring his first employee, and his advice for people just starting out in the industry. Although he loves it now, Justin didn’t always have a plan to become a furniture maker. In fact, he started out in a very different career path altogether.
About six or seven years ago, Justin was part of a crew fighting wildfires. Before that, he had earned a business management degree from Purdue. Then he went into the Marine Corps for four years prior to fighting fires. Justin explains that he had no background in furniture, but in the offseason of fighting wildfires he decided that was gonna be his only year doing it. While he loved the job, it was just too hard in regard to his family. Fighting wildfires meant being gone all summer, and he and his wife had already spent too much time apart through their different military posts.
Justin then decided that he needed to find a new career that would be closer to home. They had just bought a house and Justin had been doing some construction work on the house in the offseason. They had a shop, and during that winter Justin felt it was his opportunity to try to make something happen with a small business. Justin’s brother-in-law and his wife had a print making business at the time, and the independence of that kind of work greatly inspired him. He started out doing really small planters, home decor and the like to get his feet wet. Eventually Justin took on some custom furniture projects out of necessity, and ended up really liking it.
Ethan then jumps right into how Justin started his furniture business. Many people start out with custom stuff, which Justin did a little bit of, but then he became laser focused on his own furniture collection. They then begin to discuss the first days of Justin’s company and how it grew.
Justin began doing some custom work to start out with to start getting experience. He completed some projects such as a built-in couch for a houseboat down in Sausalito, California through an interior designer that he met on Instagram. Justin notes that he didn’t know what he was doing, he took on those jobs out of a fiscal necessity, but began having fun building bigger stuff. He felt that he wasn’t very good at doing these built-ins, cabinetry, and they didn’t really pique his interest that much either, but he discovered that there are other types of furniture out there. He just started reading all about furniture making and picked up the Sam Maloof book, which completely blew his mind.
Justin reiterates that he was brand new to furniture, and brand new to any kind of design. So while he was still doing some custom stuff, he didn’t really enjoy it. Nevertheless, he wanted to carve out a little time to just see what would happen if he tried to design his own stuff. It wasn’t by vision or by planning, he ended up doing the opposite thing to what a lot of people do, by starting with his furniture collection. Justin states that he just kind of stumbled into that by following his passion. Then once he realized what he would have to sell it for to make it profitable, he truly didn’t think it was possible but he knew it would be fun to try!
Ethan asks Justin about his process of pricing and how he goes about it. He mentions that many people start with their custom furniture, they feel out the market, and then they jump into creating a collection of furniture after they’ve already developed pricing.
Justin explains that pricing has been one of the steepest learning curves for him. He had an early mentor give him advice that really stuck with him and changed his mindset about his work. When Justin started his business, he wasn’t sure if people would buy his work, and he attempted to please the masses with some creations, things that he wasn’t passionate about. His mentor told him not to do that because he was building a creative business. If a creator is not actually passionate about a project, people will recognize that, they won’t want to buy it, and it won’t be worth running the business.
Justin notes that it’s hard enough running a small business. If he didn’t even enjoy the subject matter, then why was he doing it? That advice was really important for him to hear, as he realized how passionate he was about the early furniture that he began to envision. He then recognized that if it’s profitable, he can do it, and if it’s not, it can be a hobby, and he could pay the bills with something else. It costs money to run a business, so if he’s not bringing it in through his passion, it is just not worth it to have a creative business.
As a result, Justin has taken that lesson to heart with his pricing. He now has the attitude of “I’m going to charge what it takes. And if it doesn’t work out, then that’s fine. The market has spoken.” He understands that his prices are high. But there’s no sense in like struggling his entire life to build something and then just go bankrupt because he hasn’t been charging enough the whole time.
Ethan notes that there is a big difference between building furniture and having a furniture company, between starting it as a passion project and actually doing it as a sustainable business that can earn you a living. There are a many people who have been building furniture for a long time, and they’re just not making the money that they think they should. In many cases, that’s because their pricing is wrong.
Justin agrees that people have to decide how they’re going to structure their business. If you’re not working with showrooms, it will be really different by doing only direct to consumers. He believes that many people are really into that model right now with the internet and he understands why, but he cautions that you may end up spending more on advertising than you think with a line of furniture. Justin states that if you’re not going to work with showrooms or wholesalers, you have to make that decision early on. However, he goes on to mention that you shouldn’t be afraid to shift your pricing model if you decide you do want to work with wholesalers. It is a lot of money and for Justin it’s worth it. He tries to handle this side of the business a little differently than a lot of people by trying to do both.
He sells his furniture through showrooms and wholesalers, but he also does a lot of marketing himself, and selling straight off his website, too. He lists a retail price on his website, and then interior designers, architects, wholesalers, and others use an industry standard trade discount to accommodate all of their overhead, which is significant for brick and mortar stores. Justin really only works with brick and mortar stores, in general, as they are people who are willing to sell his furniture for him. He recognizes the enormous huge value in that.
These people get a significant discount, because they’re doing all the work of the sales. Early on, Justin realized that he needs to be able to survive on wholesale pricing. He tallies the cost of raw materials, shop time, and overhead marketing to decide what percentages are right for him. He advises that your retail price has to stay the same across all of your platforms, which was the biggest thing that he didn’t initially understand. He had people that were wanting to wholesale, who explained that they can’t sell a product for twice as much as he sells it because people would only buy it from the source. As such, he notes that you have to be really strict on your minimum advertised pricing and your map pricing to be able to stay consistent across every platform, whether you’re selling on your website or through interior designers, architects, trade folks, or wholesalers.
Ethan applauds Justin’s success selling his furniture through the wholesale showroom method, and he inquires about how Justin works with, and sells through interior designers.
Justin notes that this is another subject that he didn’t realize involves an industry standard. When he started he had no idea what a trade discount was. This discount helps interior designers and architects cover all the time that they spend finding the perfect furniture for their clients. Justin notes that this is not an inane industry thing, where certain special people get perks. It’s because these individuals are putting the work in to get your products out there. He has seen industry standards range from 10% to 20% for a trade discount, and he provides a 15% discount for interior designers and architects. While he doesn’t have a specific vetting program, he checks their email address, their website, and their social media, to ensure that they’re a real trade account, and that if they are promoting his brand, that they will do so responsibly.
Ethan congratulates Jusin on the excellent situation he’s created for himself. On one side, he has the wholesale and showrooms pushing his furniture to clients, and on the other side, he has interior designers and architects pushing his furniture to clients. Ethan asks about Justin’s self-promotional route as well, the process of taking his own money and investing it back into the business.
Ethan notes that “high-quality across the board” is something that everyone is striving for, but Justin has done it really well for a number of years now, which is very impressive, and something to applaud. He goes on to ask Justin about the process of bringing other people into his shop, stating that when other people work for him, and it’s out of his hands, that quality can sometimes suffer. Ethan asks how Justin decided to make that jump from building everything himself and controlling it to having employees and putting his passionate work in other people’s hands.
Justin responds that about four years ago, he reached the point where he was busy enough. He had begun making the sling chair at that point, but not very many of them, so this stage was primarily focused still on planters, and smaller projects. Nevertheless, he was starting to feel the need for another person in the shop, but he knew he couldn’t afford it. Right around that time, he got a random email from a student in India who was studying design, interior design, and she was getting her Master’s Degree in furniture design. She emailed him asking for an internship. Justin notes that originally he thought there was no way, but then he started thinking about how he had been feeling the need for help, and though he couldn’t afford it yet, this could be a great way to see what it’s like to have another person in the shop.
He really didn’t want to hire an employee, realize it’s not going to work out and have to fire them. So this seemed like an ideal limited time opportunity to try to figure out if two people could work in his shop, and if he had enough work for two people. So Prachi and her mom came out and vacationed in Bend, Oregon for three or four months while she interned with Justin over that summer. That experience gave him an idea of what having an employee would be.
Ethan then asks where Justin wants to take his company. Whether he intends on staying boutique and building furniture that way, or scaling to become as big as possible.
Justin responds that he has been thinking about that concept a lot, especially now that he is finally in his bigger shop as of last summer. He notes that they finally have enough space, but in spite of that it’s starting to feel tight already. He explains that he sees two paths ahead of him. One route he can take is to try to get a big commercial space, but locally in Bend, Oregon these spaces are in high demand, which makes them hard to find, and expensive. He goes on to say that if he follows that path, he’ll reach a point where he won’t really be in a creative role anymore, and instead have to take on a managerial role, which keeps him away from his love of woodworking. While he loves the idea of keeping all of his furniture production under his own roof, he feels that he would lose out on the design side a lot.
Justin continues that the other route is to start outsourcing stuff, which is kind of the way he is leaning right now. He’s had difficulty finding a bigger manufacturer in the United States to outsource one or two designs to, but he believes that his best road forward may be to outsource his older designs like the sling chair to a bigger, responsible, well-managed, meticulous manufacturer
Justin first acknowledges that it is a hard industry to make a living in, and a lot of the things that ended up working for him are because he tried 100 other things that didn’t work. He goes on to state that his biggest piece of advice would just be to stay really open minded. You don’t really know what your business is going to look like in five or ten years, especially if you’re just starting out. Then try a bunch of stuff and work really hard. When you’re starting out initially, you have to throw a really wide net, and you may not really know what’s going to come back and actually work, but something will.
Website: https://fernwehwoodworking.com/
Instagram: @fernwehwoodworking
