Importance Of Effective Marketing Strategies For A Wood Marketing Company
Steve Larosiliere
April 24, 2024
Steve Larosiliere
“I eat, sleep and breathe this stuff now, it’s super enjoyable for me, and it’s relaxing. I’m just a full-blown furniture guy, and I love every second of it.”
Hello and welcome to Building a Furniture Brand with Ethan Abramson, the show that talks about the business behind the furniture business. In this episode, Ethan sits down with Zack Pascarella, owner of the Buffalo New York-based furniture company Wise Owl Wood Company.
Zack has rocketed to success in the furniture business. What started as a home project accent mall has grown leaps and bounds into high-end custom tables, corporate client build-outs, and talks of nationwide showrooms.
But with such fast success also comes a steep learning curve. And Zack has taken past business knowledge, advice from trusted sources, and his ‘never say never’ attitude to grow his furniture company into the success that it is today. Follow along as they talk about learning from your experiences, choosing employees or contractors, the importance of confidence in yourself, and much more.
“So I went to the University of Buffalo for engineering school, I went for mechanical engineering. While I was in engineering school there, I invented a product for pickup trucks. This product was fastened to the inner portion of the truck’s tailgate, and when you opened your tailgate, it slid out and unfolded into an eight-foot-long surface.
It was a versatile product, and I had different versions of it. But it could have been used for tailgating, drinking games, stuff like that. I also had versions for construction workers to make a full workbench and things of that nature. I got a few versions of that patented, and then I eventually dropped out of school in my junior year to pursue my business venture with that.
So I started manufacturing those in a warehouse here in Buffalo, New York. And after about a year and a half of doing that, I was taking myself into credit card debt. I was trying to create the best product that I possibly could, but I was running into many issues with human error with some of the components that I had made for me to produce the product.
At the time, I had just got my first apartment, and that apartment just wasn’t the best shape. One day I saw on either Instagram or Facebook that somebody had taken pallet wood and made an accent wall out of it. I thought it looked really cool. I had a screenshot of it on my phone for a couple of weeks. And one day, I decided to do that. So I did one accent wall that turned into two. Then I ended up having like five or six accent walls in this one apartment.”
Zack was working himself to the bone to create his patented product while living off his savings and his accrued credit card debt. While in college, he would generate income by flipping cars and sneakers as a side hustle, and one night when he got home from work and was painting a wall of his apartment, he got the idea to use his new skill set for another revenue stream.
“I looked up at the accent wall I had done above my stairway, and I really liked the look of that one. That was the last one I did in the house, and it was by far the best. It just looked really captivating and was really cool. I thought to myself, ‘People probably pay good money for that.’ This was at like 4:30 in the morning, so I went upstairs to my bedroom, opened up my laptop, took a couple of pictures, and went on Facebook Marketplace. I made up an ad, and I went to bed.
The next morning when I woke up, I had like 32 messages. This was when the whole HGTV barn door kind of thing was really popular. So I booked three jobs that week, and I made like $3,200 cash that first week just doing accent walls. That had a snowball effect, and now I was doing accent walls left and right, just using this free pallet wood. I would drive around Western New York, calling warehouses and answering ads to get free pallets.
So I’d pick them up; I’d take my reciprocating saw and chop them into planks. Then I’d nail them onto people’s walls, and I could pay off my credit card debt with my previous business venture really quickly. Suddenly, I have people asking me, ‘Hey, do you build barn doors?’ I’m the kind of person where I truly believe, and I was taught at a young age that I could do anything I put my mind to.”
Before college, Zack was a sponsored skateboarder, and he used to compete nationwide in that field. While building skateboard ramps and rails was his only real construction experience, he is mechanically and artistically inclined. So when people asked him if he built barn doors, he said yes immediately and then went out and learned how to make one.
Pleased with his first barn door results, Zack started adding those to his repertoire alongside the accent walls he was already building. This eventually transitioned into making bars, shelving units, and more. Soon, he was contacted by local restaurants asking for commercial bars and later to design and build their entire restaurant. Now Zack is consistently being commissioned for restaurants; he has recently done a pharmacy and is currently working on an outdoor space for a local university.
Zack believes that a reason for the rate at which his success has occurred is because he has been fortunate enough to be in the right rooms with the right people. At the same time, however, he is a very competent person, and he has a lot of confidence in his abilities. Although Zack doesn’t believe it’s the easiest thing to do, he has a reasonably easy time selling his ideas and concepts.
The simple fact is that everybody’s built differently, and everyone has their own skills and abilities. There might be some furniture builders who are extraordinarily talented builders, and some might not necessarily be the best builders. Still, they’re business savvy, they’re confident, they’re well-spoken, and they’re able to sell themselves really well.
Some people have both, and these people have all different things to offer. When it comes to having a furniture company and starting it, my perspective is just having the confidence to do it. If you’re confident in your product, it’s that much easier to sell. So if you’re competent in your product, your abilities, you’re able to talk about it, and you’re passionate about it, you just have to be able to translate that into conversation with a client.
Website: https://www.wiseowlwoodco.com
Instagram: @wiseowlwoodco
