Will Sampson talks about enhancing value in your products and your business. His guest is Corbin Clay, who created a nationally recognized furniture brand while using wood nobody wanted and then sold that company to “retire” when he was only 38 years old.
This episode of the Woodworking Network Podcast was sponsored by Wood Pro Expo Florida, being held June 8-10, 2021, at The Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, FL.
Woodworking Network is a home for professional woodworkers, presenting technology, supplies, education, inspiration, and community, from small business entrepreneurs to corporate managers at large automated plants.
You can find all of our podcasts at WoodworkingNetwork.com/podcasts and in popular podcast channels. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Thanks again to today’s sponsor, FDMC magazine. If you have a comment or topic you’d like us to explore, contact me at will-dot-sampson @ woodworking network dot com. And we would really appreciate it if you fill out the survey at woodworking network.com/podcast-survey. Thanks for listening.
Intro music courtesy of Anthony Monson.
Welcome to this episode of the Woodworking Network Podcast. Join us as we explore the business of woodworking big and small and what it takes to succeed. I’m Will Sampson.
Today’s episode is sponsored by the Wood Pro Expo. We’ll be talking with Corbin Clay about his amazing adventure of building up a nationally recognized furniture brand while using wood nobody wanted and then selling that company to “retire” at the ripe old age of 38. But first I want to talk about:
Building a woodworking brand
One of the things I harp on over and over is that value in a business matters only as it is seen by your customers. Put another way, the only value that counts is what your customers value. So, what does that mean? Well, it has a lot of implications for a lot of things you do or should be doing.
For one thing, take a long hard look at everything you do, every process, all of your materials and supplies, the kinds of finishes you use, even how you sell and design your products. If something is not currently an obvious benefit to customers that they readily recognize and are willing to pay for, you have just two choices: Either work hard to educate your customers about the value so they will pay for it, or just get rid of it.
If your customers don’t want it, don’t do it. If they won’t pay for it, you can’t charge them for it. You’re just losing money over and over again to keep on trying to sell what people don’t want to pay for. And when you stop, nobody will notice.
On the other hand, if you can address a real customer need or desire and can easily demonstrate how your products do that, you add big value to your product that you can harvest easily from your customers.
This is the real secret of successful custom woodworking. Don’t get into a race to the bottom, competing on price with products that are perceived as commodities by your customers. Instead, sell premium products that exactly meet their needs, that they really want, and that offer value they understand.
Most modern custom woodworking customers don’t really understand a lot about woodworking. They don’t know the differences between basic materials, joinery, and hardware, and they really don’t care. They rely on your expertise to ensure you provide those things in the appropriate quality for their project.
The trick for you is to find out what they really do value. Why did they come to you? Are they on a hunt for the kitchen of their dreams? Can you fulfill those dreams with a process and work that lives up to or exceeds their expectations? Great! Then they will pay for that dream.
Maybe it’s not a dream they are after. Maybe they want you to cure a headache with a custom solution that gets rid of a problem they have dealt with for eons. There is a huge amount of value in solving problems and people are always willing to buy a solution to their problems. If that’s what you are selling, they’ll write the check.
Yes, it takes time to work with clients this way. But the rewards are huge. There is no wasted time when you are adding perceived value to the project. Not only will it make it easier to charge more for your work, but also it will help build your brand and pump up word-of-mouth advertising, as your customers brag to friends and relatives about their wonderful experience. Investing in customer education and working hard to find out what they really value is really an investment in your bottom line, too.
Before we get to our interview with Corbin Clay, let’s pause for a word from our sponsor.
Woodworkers tend to be tactile folks. We’ve got to touch things to decide. We’ve all been going nuts during the pandemic with the lack of touch outside our shops. But thankfully there is relief in sight. Coming June 8-10 is the next edition of the Wood Pro Expo in Florida at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach. Network face to face with your peers, see the latest technology with running machines, and attend conference sessions with industry experts sharing tips and answering your questions in person. Learn more at https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/events/wood-pro-expo. Can’t make it to Florida? There’s another Wood Pro Expo coming to Pennsylvania in October.
Today I’m pleased to have as my guest Corbin Clay, founder of Azure Furniture in Colorado. Welcome to the Woodworking Network Podcast, Corbin.
(1:50) Start
Creating value
How started.
I didn’t go to college. I was actually a mechanic when I first left high school. I thought I’d never be able to afford anything to particularly nice, so if I wanted it, it would behoove me to learn how to make it myself. Yes, like I said, I was a mechanic, and I really did not enjoy being a mechanic. I remember one day at my bench thinking, “I don’t care why this turn signal doesn’t work. Take it to a mechanic. And here I am the mechanic to whom he took it.
But anyway, I took a remodeling job in the newspaper back then and fell in love with it. I was doing that remodeling job for about six months or so and then had a heart-to-heart with myself and asked did I want to be a 23-year-old college freshman, probably six years away from then being entry level in my career. I was walking down a path of engineering, motorcycle-specific engineering. Or, this woodworking thing is pretty cool. Do I want to be entry level at my career at 23?
Maybe we just scrap college altogether. So, I chose the latter option. And then, I was actually sitting at a stop light, and the delivery truck for the shop where I did my apprenticeship pulled up next to me at the stop light. And I quick looked, it said custom kitchens, and I quick took down their number. This was before we were all texting and driving as often as we do now. I just quick jotted it down and called them a few days later and just said I don’t know how much I know ‘cause I’ve only been doing this for six months. I don’t know if I’m ahead of the game or behind the game, but either way, I’ll be the hardest damn worker you’ll ever have on staff. Any room? And they hired me. They took a chance on me.
I did an apprenticeship there, very unofficial apprenticeship, but it was about two years, six months on installs, then six months in the shop building, and then another year in the finishing department, and it became pretty clear that that department was mine to take over. Finishing cabinet doors for eight hours a day in the Florida heat… It was fun, but monotony gets to me.
I moved to Boulder, Colorado shortly afterwards, and within a few years started the business.
(5:20)How did Azure Furniture come about?
When I first moved to Colorado, I had no idea what the beetle-killed pine epidemic was. So, it turns out there are 4 million acres of dead pine trees, in the American Rocky Mountains, most of which are in Colorado. So, I was doing an install one day on a kitchen, and I remember looking up, and the ceiling was obviously pine tongue and groove, but it had all these blue and black streaks running through it. I thought, well that’s interesting. So, I asked the GC what’s the scoop with that pine up there. Is that a finish or a faux finish you guys are doing? He was completely incred, oh year that’s a treatment we have to apply to the wood so the beetles don’t eat it. I went like so they’ll come into your house and eat it? He went, Oh yeah, it’s a big problem. That’s completely wrong. He had no idea what he was talking about. So, I went back and asked my boss what’s the deal with these ceiling eating beetles? She looked at me like I was stoned. What are you talking about? I don’t know if he (GC) was pulling my chain or if he just didn’t know any better, but he got me either way. So, that’s when I found out about it.
I thought, this is absurd, man. Meanwhile, we would have customers asking us, “Why aren’t you guys using that beetle kill? Because there was another outbreak similar to the severity of this one back in the 80s. There was all kinds of architectural millwork and furniture coming from that period of time. They even referred to it as blue stain. Canada has a bunch, and British Columbia tried to rebrand it as “denim pine.” Branding 101, you probably don’t want to have the words beetle and kill in your product name. so, blue stain, or denim, whatever.
I was running a kitchen and bath shop there in Boulder and I’d actually taken on a second full-time job. My buddy Nick, who is actually a really talented veneer craftsman, he picked up this project, just huge, huge project, this house in Boulder to where it was all VG fir, pretty high-end stuff, but they needed a finisher to match 20, 30, 40-year-old inconsistently aged solid VG fir to brand new veneer VG fir. I’m a pretty damn good finisher that’s why I went on to that.
When I get into things, I run at them absolutely full speed. I get obsessed with things. So, I was allowed to bring my dog to the shop, so I don’t mind working 16 hours a day at all if I get to just absolutely nerd out on woodworking, finding new techniques and whatever else. So, the long answer to your question is that second job gave me a pretty good bank balance by the end of that year and entrepreneurism 101, if you can see a void in the market, you know where there’s an existing demand, you can offer some unique value proposition to satisfy that demand, you’ll probably do pretty well. You’re already starting from the right point, so I thought well shoot, I think I’m starting a company here.
A quote I love, I always wondered why nobody’s doing anything about that problem until I realized I’m part of that nobody. If I want to see furniture being made out of beetle kill pine, then maybe I should start making furniture out of beetle kill pine, you know.
(9.30) How did you market the beetle kill pine to be accepted?
Early on, incorrectly. Early on, we were trying to shoehorn it into aesthetics that it didn’t belong. This is when rustic woods were very popular. We were starting to see rough-sawn, reclaim was going crazy. Knotty alder was really big out here in the mountain regions, and I thought well those knots look very similar, so I could do really dark stained finishes and painted finishes that will be less expensive than knotty alder, and we’ll have this charming story about reclaiming the dead pine trees. I think it was Teddy Roosevelt that said “a Democrat running as a Republican will always lose to a Republican running as a Republican.” Authenticity is often overlooked and equally as often under appreciated. If you are going to do beetle kill, then damn it, double down and do beetle kill.
The original company was called Corbin Woodworking. There’s a funny story behind that. That’s when we doubled down. We realized, one, it doesn’t seem to be moving as quickly as I wanted it to, and two, brand it. I didn’t know anything about business when I first started the company. We did the name change about five years in. You learn quite a bit, often the hard way, right? We decided if we’re going to call ourselves the beetle kill company, then let’s put all the chips on blue. So, we switched the name to the Azure Furniture company. Azure is Latin for blue. We got rid of all stains and all paints, and we went with a waterbased clear to keep it very white, very natural opaque color as opposed to the very yellow Catskills cabin pine you’re used to seeing. We looked for esthetics that already incorporated pine that weren’t rustic log furniture cabin, and Scandinavian architecture and design, they use knotty woods all day long. You know, very clean angles. Not a lot of curves. Much thicker.
All of our furniture in the first collection was ¾ thick. We switched over to inch and a half. Give it a much more substantial look. And we created a brand around it. We changed all of our marketing language and all of our branding to say the goal of this company is to reclaim as many of these dead pine trees as possible into heirloom quality furniture. There’s just such negative energy out here, especially at the time, about why is no one doing anything with all these dead pine trees? No one being vague. Why don’t we make pencils out of it? Why don’t we make paper out of it? If you can alleviate a tension point in culture, a frustration for somebody, with your product or service, you’re going to do pretty well. That’s exactly what we were doing. We were saying, Hey, we’re making tables out of it. We’re making chairs, beds, on and on.
(13:10) How were you selling it? Were you selling it direct?
Aside from a pretty short relationship with a brick and mortar retailer, it was all direct. We completely pivoted away from interior designers. When I first started the business, when we were full custom, I thought, man, this is the way to go, as I’m sure a lot of listeners will say. Team up with three or four interior designers, and they’ll just keep feeding you projects. They’ll be a great partnership and on and on.
I adore interior designers because I’m terrible at interior design, so I very much respect them. But it was the exact opposite of what I was trying to do with the business. I didn’t want to do the one-off anymore. I wanted to have a collection of ten, twenty pieces, all of which use the same several joinery techniques, all of which use the same glue-ups and panel thickness, all of which use the same finishing process so that we can start to standardize. I wanted to create systems. They say how can you give your customer what he or she wants through a system rather than personally, that’s how you can slowly take yourself out of each aspect of the business. This is switching over to more business strategy as opposed to branding, but yeah, that’s what it was.
We pivoted away completely from interior designers. We started saying no a lot more, and I was just determined, I’m a fairly good salesman, I was determined if we were lucky enough to get a call or an email out of the blue, damn it, I’m going to sell them something.
(15:19) Break.
That’s it for today. We’ll talk more with Corbin Clay about how he built value in a brand then sold the business in our next podcast. If you are looking for more of our podcasts, you can find all of them at WoodworkingNetwork.com/podcasts and in popular podcast channels. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Thanks again to today’s sponsor, Wood Pro Expo. If you have a comment or topic you’d like us to explore, contact me at will-dot-sampson @ woodworking network dot com. Thanks for listening.