It all started here in our small basement which consists of 700sq feet, most of that space is consumed by packing supplies and building materials! Don’t let your available space hold you back from pursuing your small business goals! Just start building ALREADY!!
This is a quick recap of where it all began and a little info on the flow of our process! We’ve accumulated enough capital to be able to build and fill our “dream shop” with tools. We did it all with basic woodworking tools in a small space! It takes time and persistence to accumulate enough tools to run an efficient woodworking business, unfortunately, tools aren’t cheap! We started with a hammie down table saw and miter saw which quickly needed to be replaced. Its all about getting the ball rolling and slowing adding to your collection of tools.
Tools used in startup basement shop!
Miter saw
Table saw
Jointer
Bandsaw
Dust collector
Work Flow
Once there was a large demand of orders it was crucial that we figured out our “flow” or how the items move through our basement. Making individual orders is much less efficient than breaking your week into segments and batching out a large number of orders. I’ll list below how our week breaks down, its typically a 7-8 day process. When we move into the new shop we plan to do this process in 5-6 days with more items per week!
Day 1: Cut all orders into “kits”
Day 2: Glue up / Assemble
Day 3: Glue up / Assemble
Day 4: Sand all items
Day 5: Stain/Paint
Day 6: Do all finishing touches on orders and start packaging
Day 7: Packaging
Day 8: Depending on the volume of orders shipping sometimes takes two full days.
Variety of items we made!
The only goal we had in mind when starting our business was to get out of the BASEMENT! Which means only buy the necessary tools we needed to get our orders out!
The first two years of your business are the most crucial as its the make it or break it time which decides whether this is actually going to be a business or just an expensive hobby….Option B never crossed our minds!
We made a large variety of items from large furniture to small chevrons because not every item sells all the time! We needed a large sum of money to build a new shop and fill it with tools. We were taking all odd jobs, custom orders, and things we’ve never made before. Most of our new items we come out with and market are simply custom requested orders, take on odd orders, crush it, capitalize on it!
This is an effective method for gaining capital but is a ton of work! In the new shop, we plan to streamline a little more and niche down to improve or process and cut down on ship times. Once we have the kinks worked out and process figured out we will replicate our process with an employee or two allowing more time for us to work on large items and make better content.