Terry - Somerset":mtmodcr7 said:
I took up amateur woodwork/turning after taking early retirement. Having previously been an accountant I did idly wonder whether there might be a living to be made out of a hobby. After idly wondering I came to the conclusion that there were two ways:
- very high end, high quality, high prices. This route requires real design ability, craftsmanship and access to the right markets which may anyway take 5 - 15 years to develop as a business (if you have the skills)
- products with a wider market appeal - lower prices, higher volumes. To stand a chance of being competitive you need the right machinery, a production line approach to manufacture, sourcing materials by the cu. metre, etc. As a one man band trying to do everything - production, sales, administration, purchasing, cash collection, accounting etc - it is very hard work. If you employ people you have added issues with recruitment, training, insurance, sickness cover etc etc. Pricing will nearly always be compared to the mass market (think Ikea etc) where costs are low due to high volumes, multi £m investment in plant and/or cheap far east labour rates.
I came to the conclusion that I was lacking the skill and dedication for the former. The latter involves running a business in which the products, materials and processes are subordinate to money and efficiency - I spent 40 years doing this and it would not be a fun hobby.
You may, I hope, strike lucky and find a product niche in which you develop real expertise, too small or specialist for other companies to think worth competing. Starting with some knowledge of running a small business and woodworking obviously helps compared to a "blank sheet". But most products are easily copied and often improved by others - the is where a lot of our inspiration comes from.
You make some good points Terry. I'd like to expand on a couple of them.
In reality I doubt there is much correlation between pure furniture making
skill and
income. I know some makers that don't have my skill levels but probably earn a bit more than I do, and likewise I know makers that have higher skills than me but probably earn a bit less. Indeed there's one maker who is quite well known in the business as being exceptionally skilled (most makers would put him high amongst the top ten in the UK) but has faced a lifetime struggling to just stay afloat, enduring huge hardships along the way. For the most part however furniture makers seem squeezed into a relatively consistent earnings band no matter what their skills are.
You can divide furniture making into three broad skill levels, and achieving the first level isn't actually all that difficult. I'd guess at 1000 to 2000 hours of training would get you to the stage where you could make most rectilinear pieces to a decent standard. At this level you could for example make pretty much an entire household of Shaker style furniture. Toss in some decent machinery to speed things up, some passable design skills, and a slick sales & marketing approach, and you're off to the races. Many would ask, is more skill than that cost effective or necessary? The second skill level adds in the ability to make veneered, laminated, curved work, or jointed chairs, this would correspond to the roughly 10-12000 hours of a traditional apprenticeship and sets you up to make pretty much any piece of furniture you care to mention. The third level is genuine master work, having the skills to devise the fiendishly complex jigs and multi-stage processes required to make genuinely innovative pieces of furniture to museum or Guild Mark standards. There was a brief period from maybe 1985 to 2007 when skill level three seemed the way to go, because a small number of furniture pieces were smashing through previous price ceilings to achieve hitherto unimagined prices. Indeed contemporary furniture was starting to be judged as artworks or future important antiques. In the UK John Makepeace's "Millennium Chair" was pivotal in that movement when it sold to (I think) a Chicago museum and a second version was immediately made for a private collector for (I think again!) £60,000. A lot of makers suddenly decided, that's the way forward. Make extraordinary pieces, get an agent, and sell for breathtaking prices to a tiny elite of museums and ultra wealthy collectors. But with the 2007/8 crash that market pretty much collapsed. Furthermore, even in the US, which seems a bit further forward in terms of economic recovery, it's never really come back. I've no idea why this is the case, but when I talk to people who were genuine players at this level that's the message I consistently hear.
The second important issue you raise is design. And I think this is so critical it deserves a thread to itself. The fact is, if there's little correlation between furniture making skill and income, then there is even less correlation between furniture making skill and design skill! Yet design skill is the only
scaleable element in the mix, and ultimately is what consumers are really willing to pay for. The problem though for furniture makers (as you hinted at) is that there is very little protection in law for furniture design, and enforcing that limited protection is both expensive and protracted. In reality the most talented furniture designers quickly figure this out for themselves and decide to either sub contract making entirely and concentrate on design, or sell their design talents directly to the big manufacturers. I've always thought it telling that the highest accolade in UK furniture making is a bespoke Guild Mark, but that's awarded to the
designer and the actual
maker doesn't get a single mention anywhere on the documentation!
Net all this out and I come back to what I said earlier, the great majority of makers are earning an annual gross contribution (i.e. before fixed overheads) of £15,000 to £25,000. And it would be a very brave or foolish person who set themselves up, purely as a maker of bespoke domestic furniture, with the expectation of breaking out above this range. In other words, these modest financials either work for you or they don't, and if they don't then you need to find another plan because even though it's not impossible that you'll be the exception, it's highly unlikely.
