Beware the cheats!

[Jacob]

....employ people to make ecconomies of scale. ....

You don't have to employ people to get economies of scale. You just set about making say 10 of whatever it is, instead of one. All the cost of design development prototype etc goes into the first one, the others are really cheap to make.

I want to work wood because I love wood.

On a seasonal note; I want to work mince pies because I love mince pies.; it takes only slightly longer to make a dozen mince pies than it does to make just one. :lol:

there are very affluent people around, but who will still only buy cheap imported rubbish.

There are very affluent people around, and some not so affluent, who will pay for better quality stuff.

 

[doctor Bob]

But you do have a production set up, and it is not something I want to do. I don't want to work with mfc carcasses,I don't want to break out frame and panel doors on a spindle and make boxes on a Brookman. I don't want to spray everything in whatever pastel colour is in vogue with the WAGS at the moment. I want to work wood because I love wood. I like the challenge of the design. I didn't start off making the things I do to transmogrify into a production enterprise that has little resmblance to what I started and employ people to make ecconomies of scale. Why would I get into woodwork, I might as well be making cardboard boxes or tin cans to make money.

And in any case, where do all these 20 grand kitchen jobs come from, if you read my earlier posts I was saying how I can't get people to pay more than 5000 for a suite of walnut bedroom furniture.

I'm not asking for ways to make my business work, I know it is marginal and I stopped trying a few years ago. I was actually wondering why it should be marginal, when there are very affluent people around, but who will still only buy cheap imported rubbish.


Mike.

This is about your ego, not the customers.

 

[custard]

There's very little industry data for independent furniture makers so any observations are conjectural. Furthermore there's no such thing as a typical independent furniture maker, they come in all shapes and sizes and they succeed or fail in lots of different ways. However, I believe there are some underlying themes that paint a picture of an evolving independent furniture business.

In the post war period independent furniture making was closely linked to the antiques business. In some respects that was a pretty happy combination. The nature of the antique trade was that for every high street antique shop there was much wider network of people who were largely invisible to the general public. The typical piece of antique furniture might change hands within the trade five or ten times before it surfaced in a shop, moved around by a loose and informal network of dealers who weren't shop based but bought and sold purely within the trade. That allowed an independent furniture maker to buy a cheap property (and if you go back to any time before about 1980 property was cheap, and rural barns in particular were an absolute give away) and set up a workshop in the middle of no where. But as long as they were plugged in to the antique network they could still just about survive on restoration business. They could buy from auction on their own account, restore pieces, and wait for the knock on the door from a dealer. Or they could work as a trade restorer. And the production, equipment, and layout requirements for a restoration workshop were pretty similar to an independent furniture maker's requirements, so the two activities co-existed pretty well. Particularly so as many independent cabinet makers in that era were more focused on making antique reproductions rather than contemporary designs. No one was making a fortune, but there was a business model that allowed the independent maker to survive.

Some makers tried to break away from repro and restoration, and if they managed to rise above the herd and establish a reputation for original design (like say Alan Peters, John Makepeace, or the Barnsley workshop) they found there were occasional commercial commissions that further enhanced their reputation and provided a profitable nugget of business. Those commissions could be a board room table for ICI or Courtaulds, or a suite of office furniture for an embassy or a government department. For example the Barnsley workshop recently had an office suite back from the department of education for some repair work, it had originally been commissioned by a minister in the 70's. I doubt a government department or even many publicly quoted company's would risk the potential bad publicity of an original commission today, but back then there was at least some lucrative and prestige business to be had.

Starting in the 80's and 90's a few very interesting developments began to brew.

Firstly there was resurgence in hobbyists wanting to learn furniture making. It had always been there, but the nascent growth in specialist tool makers suggests it was really starting to take off. This in turn led to a demand for training, a demand which independent furniture makers could tap into in order to keep themselves afloat.

Secondly there were a few wealthy collectors and museums who began to commission individual pieces not as furniture, but as important examples of the "decorative arts". Even though this had been bubbling under on both sides of the Atlantic the clear turning point for this in the UK was probably Makepeace's millennium chair,

This piece really heralded the mature reality of the studio movement, where instead of scrabbling to make a living from many smaller commissions the designer/maker could spend a year producing one amazing piece and then sell it for £50,000 or £100,00 or who knows where the ceiling would eventually be found,

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 62748.html

This changed everything. The new potential business model that excited makers was to raise their skills at Parnham or Barnsley (or in the US by studying with Osgood or Krenov), gain public awareness by winning a Guild Mark or showing their work at prestige exhibitions, and then staking profitability on one big roll of the dice. And there was added impetus to make this happen, because the antique market was virtually collapsing, with prices falling year after year. It was widely believed that antique prices were strongly correlated with house prices, in the 89-95 house price crash antiques dutifully fell, but they never subsequently recovered. So the financial crutch for an independent furniture maker, of steady if unspectacular restoration and repro business, was fast disappearing.

And for a few decades it really did play out that way and many makers look back on those times as a golden era. However, two developments acted to curb the enthusiasm for a future based around the studio furniture model. There was the dawning realisation that for many their making skills were much stronger than their designing skills, so the phrase "designer/maker" was really designer with a small "d" but maker with a capital "M". Plus the crash of 2007 seemed to bring an abrupt halt to the really big commissions. I don't operate in that market, but I know several makers who do, and from what I hear those six figure commissions have never really come back in anything like the same volume as before and there's a growing doubt that they ever will.

Which takes us to where we are today. There's still a market for hobbyist training, and I guess educator/makers like Marc Fish or Waters & Acland pay the bills by selling training more than from their breathtaking furniture creations. Although I'm not sure how robust that demand will be in a future without company pensions, and where today's twenty and thirty somethings will carry the burden of university fees and massive mortgages throughout their lives. And there are still big prestige commissions for the absolute pinnacle of makers, for example the furnishings for the Ashmolean Museum or Apple's decision to patronise independent makers for many of their office furnishings.

But most independent makers that I know today have a blended business model, they still design and make their individual pieces as a labour of love, but the bills really get paid from fitted furniture work, heritage joinery, or yacht fit outs. And that means instead of being located in some idyllic rural retreat they'll rent space in an industrial estate. What's more the reality of something like fitted furniture work means it tends to crowd out the pure furniture making, to succeed you need more space with a different layout, which in turn means higher overheads, which then feeds back to less time for agonising about the exact angle of splay on the leg of a console table! Alternatively there are still makers who stay afloat because they have a supportive partner with a "proper" job, or they took early retirement, or they combine freelance IT consulting with furniture making, or they're simply loaded after a short but spectacularly well remunerated city career! But what I don't see is a broadly based group of independent furniture makers surviving purely from furniture commissions. There's pretty much always a back story that explains why they stay afloat.

Anyhow, that's my take on the market, but tea break's over so it's back to work!

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Bearing in mind Custard's point about the lack of data on the fine furniture industry, I wouldn't mind placing a small bet that 95% of it is in London and the South East - or at any rate, that's where most of the sales are made. That's just because that's where the largest disposable incomes are.

There's still plenty of work in the rest of the country, but it's more along the lines that Robin and Tomatwark have outlined. In my area, there are at least two or three really good general joiners who never advertise because all their work comes on recommendation - but they had to work hard to build that. I rather doubt they do a piece of freestanding furniture more than once every Preston guild, though.

 

[Jacob]

There's a whole other market out there.
Difficult to put a finger on it but it followed Conran/Habitat, vaguely "Country Living", sinks to "shabby chic", rises to IKEA (good design but too cheap), heavily represented in various interiors magazines. Perhaps started with Festival of Britain.
The key thing seems to be good design - the things themselves and the things being liveable with in their household situations.
There really is plenty of scope here for the small scale designer/maker.
Strongest and most alive in Scandinavia perhaps.

PS I always think of Makepeace et al as picturesque but basically a dead end. They seem to have set the tone amongst woodworkers but not necessarily in a good way. Basically very posh stuff for very wealthy people.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Interesting newspaper article. One thing that struck me, though, was that the need to persuade people that a mortgage wasn't necessary to commission furniture was mentioned - The woman who had those four chairs made paid one thousand pounds less than I paid for my first house six years after that.

 

[Nelsun]

Well this all makes for interesting reading; hearing different opinions on what has and hasn't worked for folk.

Coming back to Busy-boy Stan, I noticed he's deleted a post to his page asking the direct question: do you make the furniture in the UK? The poster even pushed for a definitive answer after an obvious dodge by Stan. To his credit though, he didn't delete another question, "Hi I really. Like some of your furniture. Just wonder what type of wood you use and where it comes from". His response: "It comes from trees". No sheet Sherlock!

 

[tomatwark]

If the like's of Chippendale had access to the a materials and machinery we have today he would have used them.

He was in the game to MAKE money and not indulge his passion, the fact was that he did not get paid on time for a lot of the stuff that is talked about now, then as now a lot of the folks with money and big houses try tried to get away with taking as long as possible to settle bills or pay peanuts for it, nothing has really changed in this regard.

I suspect that there was a lot of stuff he was involved in that was made to a budget and did not survive and was not documented.

A lot of the furniture made then was glued and nailed together made from cheap pine and then veneered as that was the best way to make something that made you money and looked good, the difference today is that veneered MDF and PLY and MFC has taken its place.

 

[Jacob]

If the like's of Chippendale had access to the a materials and machinery we have today he would have used them.

He was in the game to MAKE money and not indulge his passion, the fact was that he did not get paid on time for a lot of the stuff that is talked about now, then as now a lot of the folks with money and big houses try tried to get away with taking as long as possible to settle bills or pay peanuts for it, nothing has really changed in this regard.

I suspect that there was a lot of stuff he was involved in that was made to a budget and did not survive and was not documented.

A lot of the furniture made then was glued and nailed together made from cheap pine and then veneered as that was the best way to make something that made you money and looked good, the difference today is that veneered MDF and PLY and MFC has taken its place.

Yep. He made everything including coffins and painted furniture.
In many ways Mike is struggling with a dubious legacy from the Makepeace, Barnsley et al tendency, and is missing out on much interesting stuff and ideas going on elsewhere.

 

[Beau]

PS I always think of Makepeace et al as picturesque but basically a dead end. They seem to have set the tone amongst woodworkers but not necessarily in a good way. Basically very posh stuff for very wealthy people.

The way I see it is the likes of Makepeace are artists who happen to use wood. The art market seems to know no boundaries when it comes to price. Most of us are just craftsman but not necessarily great artist so have to compete on a totally different level. Given up myself now and make a crust via other means.

 

[tomatwark]

Yep. He made everything including coffins and painted furniture.
.

In other words the income stream the fitted kitchens and bedrooms etc give us today.

 

[Jacob]

.....
In the post war period independent furniture making was closely linked to the antiques business. ......

Pre and even post war a lot of stuff was made your local woodworker, quite separately from antiques and high value stuff.
When I lived in Wales there was a vivid example of this just down the road at what had been a water powered mill.
It had been used for flour and also as a saw mill.
It had been a timber yard supplying materials, gates, fence posts, and also made carts and farm apparatus - still had patterns for wheels etc hanging up around the walls.
They were also undertakers, making coffins and running the hearse.
On the side they made fairly basic but very nice furniture - tables, settles, dressers, and I was lucky enough to pick up some examples, and still have them.
They became a garage with petrol, diesel, paraffin etc. Pumps were still there rusting away, not having been used for 30 years or so.
If they'd been near the sea no doubt they would have made boats too.
I think this was typical all over the country, and a similar operation is described in "The Wheelwrights Shop".

The message is - if you've got the kit and you want to earn a living, be prepared to make anything and everything!
If you are going to be precious about like our woodbrains you will have to struggle or fail altogether. You might even end up as a teacher!

 

[woodbrains]

Yep. He made everything including coffins and painted furniture.
.

In other words the income stream the fitted kitchens and bedrooms etc give us today.

Hello,

Your right, I forgot Chippendale made all that stuff, dab hand with an emulsion brush, too he was. Doh!, I'm an *****! I shouldn't wonder he also made fine mahogany teeth for the local dentist. ( Who was also a barber and surgeon)

Oh hang on, wait, Chippendale was a designer, businessman and employed 30 staff. Of course he didn't make coffins and paint things himself, it is unlikely he made anything much after he set up in London. In any case, what relevance does a mid 18 C furniture designer have to a one man maker today?

And does anybody actually read my posts? I said I have done painted built in furniture, site joinery, kitchens etc. I have also fitted wooden floors, fitted bedroom furniture, built sheds, stairs, windows, shop fronts, stud walls....... I was a veritable one man band, which is the problem. And I still could never have the funds to buy Altendorf panel saws and Panhans 4 siders or whatever the production guys use these days and employ staff to run the things. After a few years of subsistence living and not making a satisfying piece of furniture because I got the reputation of being a flipping site joiner, a painter a shed builder, anything but a good furniture maker, it was time to fold. It is not as if I hadn't worked for lawyers, surgeons, GP's, architects all with the money, but would not buy. They wanted my stuff, they loved it, but they would not buy. I had been told by an architect and an interior designer that I was charging too little, so I put my prices up a little. I lost every job I quoted for. It is the wealthy who will not spend, is what I'm trying to discuss, not a fix for me as I've been there and won't do it again. People will be cheated and buy dreadful quality stuff to save money rather than buy good stuff for a fair price and I'm interested why that culture has arisen.

Incidentally, I have never wanted to emulate Makepeace or Barnsley et all. I have only wanted to do reasonable things not high art or make egotistical statements.

Mike.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

It can be done - Suzanne Hodgson has been quietly beavering away near Chester for a couple of decades, I think.

http://www.suzannehodgson.co.uk/203134076

 

[woodbrains]

It can be done - Suzanne Hodgson has been quietly beavering away near Chester for a couple of decades, I think.

http://www.suzannehodgson.co.uk/203134076

Hello,

Yes, I know Suzanne well, lovely lady.

She struggles as despairately as I did, I'm afraid, though she might not have needed to do as much site joinery and shed building as me to make ends meet.

Mike.

 

[NazNomad]

 

[Mr T]

I think the one man high end bespoke furniture making model is just not viable, except for the few who are exceptional makers and can carve out a good customer base. Perhaps Custard is a good example of the latter, I don't know much about his business. Both Mike and I tried this model, Mike being a little more idealistic than I, declining to use man made boards etc. I think it is unviable because it is not possible for an individual to perform all the functions off the business and get enough hours in at the bench to be able to charge an acceptable price. As Custard said, some one man designer makers have other sources of income, a spouse in a profession perhaps or they have made their fortune in a previous occupation. It's a hard road if you don't have this back up. I am occasionally contacted by people considering taking the step in making, often with little actual craft experience, I have to admit that i am a bit of a wet blanket on these occasions

I would say that the one man designer/makermodel is almost a lifestyle decision. We were "Lifestyle woodworkers" (Paul Sellars is not alone!). However those who take this path should not be upset when the consumer declines to finance our chosen lifestyle. Some consumers will buy into the idyll of the lone craftsman but not enough to support the number aspiring to it. Jame Krenov has to take some of the responsibility for the many of the aspirants to this idyll, although his influence has probably waned in recent years. Many of those who take this path are loners who would find it difficult to work as part of a bigger workshop. I know the only time I have worked in a partnership it all went pear shaped.

What are the options when the one man high end model doesn't work for you. You could do kitchens and fitted furniture but that may not be what you aspired to originally. You could go beyond the one man thing and employ makers to spread the overheads but then you may find you are no longer a maker, just a manager and salesman. You could do the reverse and seek employment in another makers workshop. In my case I have slowly drifted into teaching until I made the commitment to concentrate on it alone. I like to think I am as good or even better teacher than I was maker.

Finally one of the problems for the idealistic aspiring designer maker is that he sees his business aim as making furniture. If you are serious about your business you should see the aim of the business as making an income how you do it may be secondary.

Chris

 

[acewoodturner]

Regardless of what you make, first and foremost, you have to be a salesman. Doesn't matter if you are the best chair maker, box maker, cupboard maker in the land, if you cant sell them then you have cashflow problems. Your local enterprise company should have a variety of courses for people who run small businesses and they are usually free (they are up in Fife). You also need to look at how you market what ever you make. Websites these days are quite cheap to set up even if you have to do it yourself or pay somebody a few quid (despite my son having a degree in coding I have done my own website and shop!). A website doesn't have to be all singing and dancing with animated graphics and as I tell potential customers, "I am a woodworker, not a web worker" so its not brilliant and could be better. You can pick up a decent digital camera for not much more than £100 and take good photos of items you have made. Don't use a mobile phone for this as they aren't good enough. I am not really into social media so attempt to avoid this if possible, but its worth getting a Facebook page for the business and putting up info and photos on this.
What you are trying to sell is your uniqueness and the fact you are local. What are the features of your items and what do these features translate to as benefits for your customers. Sit down and think about these and draw up a list. For example one of my main features of my products is that all the timber I use is from windblown trees all within a 5 mile or so radius of the workshop. I plank them up with a chainsaw mill and kiln dry the wood in my workshop. People love the fact that "no trees were chopped down to make my stuff" and the fact that I could actually show them the tree stump. Try asking that in Ikea!
I have spent a few years on the craft circuit which has lead to a lot of business with other business who are my main target customer with some very specialised products. I now seem to be the guy to phone for a lot of their required items which is a good position to be in, but it took me 8 years to get there and I ended up getting there via a personal recommendation. I know not everyone enjoys facing the public and trying to sell to them even after some training, so if this could be you how about asking someone else, who may be a bit more "lively" to front up your sales pitch at a craft fair/event and you could do the back up technical advice etc. You have to build up a relationship with a potential customer very quickly and if you are a bit dour or hacked off this will never happen!
Get yourself some decent quality business cards printed (avoid Vista print as they are naff) and hand them out
There are plenty of woodfairs around the country now and there should be some close to you. These are ideal venues because people come to buy items made from wood and they are interested in wooden products. You just have to make sure they buy from you and not the bloke next to you.
Its a bit of a ramble and long winded but I know where you are coming from. The customers are there whatever your price point - you just have to sell to them!

Mike

 

[Mr T]

It can be done - Suzanne Hodgson has been quietly beavering away near Chester for a couple of decades, I think.

http://www.suzannehodgson.co.uk/203134076

I also know Suzanne, we were a members of th now moribond Northern Contemporary Furniture Makers. She is an amazing maker and also veery generous with the help. As Mike said she has also have some very lean times.

Chris

 

[custard]

You make some interesting points Chris, I'd add a few random observations of my own.

The objective I set myself was to earn a gross contribution of £1,000 a week (that's revenue after deducting variable costs, which for a furniture maker is chiefly the cost of timber). I reckon if you could consistently hit that then you'd have a viable business that would allow for renting a workshop, running a vehicle, etc. I regularly hit that target across several consecutive months, but not across a full year. I think it's possible to get close, but pushing across that line for full year after full year is pretty tough. I doubt I'll ever entirely get there, and I'm sceptical that there are many makers achieving better financial results from pure furniture making. My overheads are vanishingly small, but for younger makers who have to pay rent and possibly repay a loan on a vehicle or machinery, then the lean periods could drag you under pretty quickly.

I might disagree with Chris about the importance of cabinet making skill in the business equation. I've found very little correlation between project complexity and profitability. In fact it's the reverse, the really profitable jobs (at least in my experience) tend to be the simplest. As soon as I undertake more complex (and more satisfying) commissions, then profitability generally drops off a cliff. I'll live with that, sacrificing profit for satisfaction, but many makers don't have that luxury.

The absolute level of skill required to make commercially saleable furniture really isn't all that high, about a thousand hours of structured training would probably get you to the position where you could handle the majority of the profitable commissions. You might not be very fast, but you'd know how to get the job done, and speed would come with practise. You wouldn't be able to make jointed chairs, or more complex veneering, or lamination work, or deal with compound angles or curved structures. But to be honest you make so little money doing these time hungry, technically demanding projects that you may decide you'd rather not have those skills in the first place!

Many makers don't seem to be very switched on when it comes to getting commissions. I realised early on that things I do without a second thought (like vigorously working a room to sell my furniture, or canvassing high end local shops to get my furniture displayed and noticed, or cadging free display space at county shows, or getting that all important 30% deposit paid and banked) are just beyond the comprehension of many makers. They could no more effectively promote their products than they could fly. And that's the flip side of the cabinet making skill issue. You might not need Guild Mark skill levels, but you absolutely need to be sufficiently gregarious and outgoing that you can actively sell your furniture to prospective clients.

Making skills aren't scaleable. If you're the greatest maker in the world the only way you can increase your income is with higher prices (hence the attraction of the "studio furniture" model). But design skills are scaleable. If you're a genius designer you can sub out the making or take a royalty off your designs, and there's really no upper limit to your earning potential. The hard fact though is that there are loads of exceptional makers for each exceptional designer. And the paradox is that the real rewards of the studio furniture market accrue not to makers but to designers. Everyone's heard of John Makepeace, but how many people can name the guy that actually figured out how to build the Millennium Chair that I linked to earlier? In his own way he was every bit the genius as John Makepeace, no one had previously managed to pull off the free form lamination with invisible glue lines that that chair demanded, but his name doesn't figure in the history books.

It would be very tempting to defray overheads via a shared workshop. The benefits are so material that it's unsurprising that many makers decide this is the way forward. Unfortunately I know several cases where a shared workshop has gone pear shaped. It's easy to see how that might happen. Say you have a client who visits you at a shared workshop, but then sees a piece on another maker's bench and decides that's actually what they want. How would you resolve that one? Or what about a situation where one maker branches out into heritage joinery but ends up hogging the spindle moulder, or another maker takes on a fitted kitchen job and stuffs the workshop full of cabinets awaiting installation, how do you fix those issues? It seems to me that the only way to really make a shared workshop viable is if the co-operative model is abandoned and one person calls the shots and lays down clear rules.

If a maker is to survive there has to be a compelling justification for their price premium over High Street alternatives. There are loads of possible justifications. Furniture that's sized to exactly fit a space in the client's home is an obvious one. Or furniture made from a tree felled on the client's land is another that crops up surprisingly regularly. I focus on three clear justifications. Made to fit a space is one that I've already mentioned and that's critical to many clients. Made to the highest traditional standards is another, but that generally requires some educating of the clients as to what a hand cut dovetail or a drawer muntin actually looks like! And the third is that I'll use timbers that aren't available anywhere else; volume furniture makers have no alternative but to stick to a small number of fairly bland timbers that are sufficiently homogenous to be accurately represented in brochures and web sites. The independent maker doesn't have those constraints, and once a client's eyes are opened to the possibilities of unique figured timbers then they either buy from you or they do without. Waney edged furniture is one obvious example of that idea in action.

Anyhow, that's my take on the business of independent furniture making. I've still not quite figured out how to consistently make the target I mentioned, but these are some of the lessons I've learned that get me a bit closer, hopefully someone might find them useful.