“Why should I go with you?”

“But I saved so much money getting it from (insert any box store)”

It’s true, you can get furniture or décor cheaper from a big box store than you will from me.  But, if you have buying standards such as customer service, quality, a product made in the good ole’ U.S.A., uniqueness, and suited to your needs specifically, then maybe you should consider spending a little extra and buy from me.

Here’s the deal, I am a one man shop with no particular tool setup to run the same job over and over and over like the manufacturers of the furniture you can get at the box store do.  My machines aren’t set up to run dedicated tasks for a dedicated project.  Because of this, every piece I make typically needs machines to be set up and tooled for one of many particular tasks.  This means I could spend 10 minutes or more setting up a machine to make a special cut or create a certain profile in the work piece but actually only spend 10 seconds making said cut.  The old adage of “time is money” is extremely relevant and a big contributor to my costs. 

There you have it.  It’s on the table (perhaps a custom one that you ordered eh eh nudge nudge?), I will NOT be your cheapest option.  Before you cast your vote and walk out to the car to hastily drive to the big box store, please give me an opportunity to plead my case as to why the cheaper option isn’t always the best option.  I have already listed my main arguments in the first paragraph but the two that should stand out above all the rest are customer service and quality. 

I take extreme pride in everything I produce, from the smallest box to the largest piece of furniture.  Knowing that I was able to create a piece with my hands that resulted in absolute joy and happiness for the customer is a feeling like no other for me.  It’s that pride that I am addicted to that will ensure at the end of the day, you will be too “blind” with admiration for the final piece you won’t even care about the price you paid(well, maybe).  At the start of every project, I devote a great amount of time with you, the customer, to ensure that I am able to recreate the fantastic idea that you have captured in your head.  Typically for larger or more complex jobs, I will go as far as to create a 3D model for you to “buy off” on before I even buy a piece of lumber to build the project.  Even if the job doesn’t seem like it will be that complex I will still at least try to provide some sort of sketch to ensure I am heading in the right direction.  Granted not everything I make and sell is a custom piece but it is still made with the same pride that I am oh so addicted to and will stand behind every piece I make to ensure you are happy!

I’m sure you have heard it but you get what you pay for (usually).  With me, it’s true, you really do.  You will spend more with me, but the quality of my product will outlast anything you will ever buy at the box store, hands down!  Guaranteed, in 200 years you will see (okay maybe not you, but someone) a piece of furniture made by a woodworker in a museum before you see an IKEA dresser or TV stand.  My project will do laps around the box store product in the endurance race.  It’s no secret how I will win that race either.  It boils down to a couple of basics, material and joinery. 

First let’s talk about material.  Here is where the other big factor of my cost comes in to play.  Are you ready for this?  I, as a woodworker, use……WOOD!  A novel concept I know! I can hear the gasps from all around.  “But Erik, isn’t what I buy at (insert big box store) made from wood too?”  Weelllll, this may or may not come as a surprise to you, but much of what you buy at the box store isn’t actually wood.  Sure, it’s wood-ish.  I mean, it’s typically comprised of a bunch of tiny pieces of wood compressed into a “board” shape, but it’s not actually wood, it’s composite board or sometimes MDF.  Think back to that cheapo bookshelf you bought from Walmart (pssst, look at the image above!) when you finally got your own place.  You just happened to load too many books, or AV equipment, on a shelf one day and it split on the edge where the pins go in.  Remember what was inside?  It was crumbly and looked like a bunch of wood splinters and chunks that appeared to have been thrown in a vat of glue, laid into a mold, and then compressed into a board shape.  It looked like that because that’s what it is.  I have even seen now where IKEA is starting to make their furniture out of cardboard.  I guess if the material has the word “board” in it it’s good enough to make furniture with no matter what the material actually is!  No worries folks, they dress up the structural cardboard with some lovely wood grain veneer (not even real wood veneer mind you).  Sure, cardboard actually has surprising structural qualities to it but I don’t know about you, if I am spending any amount of money (even if it’s a way cheaper amount) to get a piece of furniture from them I would feel cheated knowing that I am getting essentially fake scrap wood and cardboard.  Don’t even get me started on the nightmare of assembling their “furniture”.  At the end of the day, how big of a deal did you really get?

I ranted long enough about material, let’s talk about joinery.  I am constantly reading about and researching different joinery methods and different methods to make them be it by machine or hand.  Joints that have been used for centuries by all cultures across the world.  If there’s one difference I have noticed in the joinery I would use versus the joinery they will use it’s this:  one of ours is made for strength and one of ours is made for assembly.  Can you guess whose is which?  Now, this doesn’t mean there isn’t joinery out there that can be both.  Japanese furniture and campaign style furniture are great examples of “knock down” joinery/furniture where you can have your cake and eat it too.  But “their” furniture is not modeled to be like Japanese or campaign style knock down furniture.  And like I stated in the last paragraph, I build my stuff to be in it for the long haul.  In order for this to happen, I need to spend the extra time producing joints that are stronger, even if they take much longer to produce.  And since I will deliver a final assembled product and not a bunch of parts with a diagram showing some goofy cartoon character that illustrates how the parts go together in an oddball order, I don’t need, nor want, to use joinery that is catered towards on-site assembly.  When it comes to joinery, there’s a million ways to skin a cat (I don’t condone that though….I mean what value does a cat pelt really have?).  Some joints are stronger than others, some are more pleasing to the eye, some are easier to construct.  There are pro’s and con’s to almost any joint but I make it a point to provide the best suited one for your project, even if it means more time to make it.  I would rather swallow my pride and come to you with my tail tucked between my legs asking for more time, perhaps even money, to finish the project instead of coming to you with my tail tucked between my legs because I have to fix insufficient joinery on a project I made for you.  

Well, there you have it, my arguments as to why you will be happier in the end spending more with me instead of spending less with them. It has been pondered by many that if you do what you love is it actually work? Yes, I do love what I do and many days in the shop don’t feel like I am even working, but I also like eating food and having heat in the winter. I say this because if I did this for free or almost free (because I love it so much), my family and I would have to resort to eating the sawdust and scrap pieces from your custom piece or huddled around a barrel burning the same sawdust and scrap pieces to stay warm. I love what I do but at the end of the day what I do is work and because work yields income, and income yields actual food and non-hobo style heat for my family.