The Future Furniture Maker with Chris Salomone of Foureyes Furniture

“I mean, sometimes I think people, if they were in that situation that I was in, and they decided to scale back, they could look at that as a failure. I wouldn’t look at it that way. I would say if you’re doing what makes you happy, then you’re succeeding.”

• Chris Salomone

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 Chris Salomone, owner of Southern California-based Furniture Company, Foureyes Furniture. 

Now, Chris does not have what you would consider a traditional furniture company. Yes, he builds furniture. Yes, he has a furniture shop. But he doesn’t sell any of that furniture to make his living. Ethan wanted to talk with Chris because he sees the path he’s taking by selling plans, making content, and building a digital footprint as the path that the modern furniture maker is taking. 

Industries change and evolve and grow to encompass the old and the new ways of doing things, and Chris is a solid blend of both. So follow along as they talk about the future of woodworking, how to price your furniture plans, if you could still succeed in the world of content, and much more. 

Starting Digitally

Unlike many other furniture makers, Chris considers himself as having grown up as an unhandy person and still is to this day. He started woodworking when he was 30 years old after he and his wife had just purchased their home. As part of that process, he had become interested in 3D modeling in SketchUp, and he began drawing the interiors of homes. 

“That kind of started leading into drawing furniture and getting interested in that. I had never really done any woodworking or even used power tools really. But I started modeling up a bunch of furniture; Things that I saw that I liked, which kind of gave way to coming up with new ideas and, you know, drawing things that made no sense in terms of how you would construct something. 

“From there, I kind of started reverse engineering pieces. I would find a piece that I liked, look at how it went together, and model it. So, I spent probably two years just like goofing around in SketchUp and kind of learning how joinery worked and how furniture actually went together before I ever actually cut a piece of wood.”

• Chris Salomone

After spending all that time working within his 3D modeling software, Chris wanted to see if he could physically construct his ideas, so he signed up for woodworking night classes at a local community college. After enjoying what he learned in his first semester, he signed up for another one that provided free time in the shops with an on-hand instructor and high-quality tools.

The first project that Chris designed was a coffee table. While he admits it was not great, it helped him understand that he enjoyed the process, it gave him the confidence to continue doing it, and it helped him know what tools he would need to invest in immediately. He quickly began buying tools and then turned his garage into a workshop before creating a small catalog of pieces to sell.

Creating his Niche

After about a year and a half creating his own pieces, Chris began to feel that he had some unique and high-quality items, so he started reaching out to design blogs. The features he received from these places garnered enough attention that customers began to reach out to him. 

At this point, Chris was still working a nine-to-five job that had nothing to do with his new passion. The time constraint from that job meant that he could not spend as much time on his projects as he would like, and he was only getting requests for his previously constructed items, which left him very little time to work on all the new ideas he had.

“That’s what kind of led me into, “I either need to quit working so that I could ramp this,” which there was that was too much risk for me at the time, or “I need to kind of step back from this and look at different things that I can do that will allow me to grow in different ways as a woodworker, and just in terms of being able to try out new things.” 

I was watching a lot of YouTube at the time and saw that there’s a niche here that isn’t filled, that maybe I can fill. So I quit taking orders at the very end of 2015 and then maybe in March of 2016 I launched my first YouTube video and kind of just went from there.”

• Chris Salomone

A Different Perspective

Not every furniture maker is interested in creating the same type of company, and there are as many different furniture businesses as there are different furniture styles. Chris has walked a unique path in the furniture-making industry, and he has picked up a great many lessons and skills along the way.  

“Some of the most common questions I get come from people that want to be YouTubers or content creators or whatever. They’ll often ask, “if you were starting today, what would you do? Is the landscape oversaturated? At this point, is it too late to start something?” I don’t think it’s too late. 

I definitely think it’s still possible to create a new channel and have it explode, and I think that there’s a lot of people that are capable of doing it, but I don’t think that everybody’s capable of doing it. People should be honest with themselves, and the questions that you should ask yourself are, what are you good at that’s unique, and that hopefully isn’t being served already? Is there something you can do better than the things that are being served already?

Whatever you enjoy doing, if you want to make it sustainable, and actually enjoy it, you have to accept that you’re probably going to do it for quite a while without any return. And you have to be okay with that, because otherwise, you’re probably going to get discouraged. If you’re ever going to gain traction and blow up, it’s probably going to be a little slow going in the beginning. 

If you can answer those first questions about finding that underserved thing that you enjoy and are good at doing, and you can honestly say that this is something where there’s an opportunity, then that gives you the green light to go ahead with it. Be willing to put in that time, realize that results will take a while, and you’re going to be putting in a lot of work initially for very little return. If you can be okay with all of that, then I think that those are the ingredients that say go for it.”

• Chris Salomone

Website: https://www.foureyesfurniture.com

Instagram: @foureyesfurniture

This episode is brought to you by Jobber – getjobber.com/ethan