Doug_Turner

Thank you very much. Good luck!

Good advice. I see my chair there on the right!

I love guerrila marketing, and practice it constantly. Really, it's the only thing I can do with my super-low ad budget.

Very good advice. I'd add a bit to the up-selling section - it's a good idea to offer complimentary pieces to your clients. A set of chairs for your client's new handmade dining table. A coffee table to go with her two new end tables. The classic "Would you like fries with that?" approach.

Porc - Thanks for your comments. Your question is something all furniture makers and craftspeople struggle with. When I'm starting to feel a project is nearly complete, I try to examine it logically, breaking it down into parts - "Will another hour or day tweaking the finish make an appreciable difference". In fact, crossing that line, and pushing forward when I feel a project is probably finished has landed me in big trouble a few times. Once I actually wrecked the finish of a coffee table and had to pay a refinisher $600 to get it back to the way it was! The financial hit hurt, but the trauma of that stupid mistake lasted years. So, my advice - be careful. There's a fine line between not done enough and needs more work. It's like Kenny Rogers sings "You've got to know when to...walk away, know when to run".

Thanks, I appreciate that.

TimNott - It does in the US as well. It's a joke - a play on words.

They would have to be veneer (oak plywood), as they are not raised panels.

Beautiful! I'd sit there for hours getting the tools in just the right place.

I like the live edge reversal - sap on the inside, like a creamy center. Nicely done.

I personally love shellac. It sticks to anything, and anything sticks to it. It's a thin, delicate finish, and dries very quickly. It's not horrible for the environment, and far from the most toxic finish out there. I have never successfully brushed or padded it on - I spray it with my hvlp gun (thinned a bit). My favorite super easy finish recipe:
-pore filler if desired
-sand
-color if desired
-2 coats shellac, sprayed on
-light sanding
-glaze if desired
-1 coat of shellac
-light sanding
-2-3 coats minwax wipe on poly (wiped on), sanding between coats
-Pumice and rotten stone buff if desired

The result is a thin but durable finish that looks like many coats of oil.

I can't say that I see the end of products like lacquer or conversion varnish however. Companies like ML Campbell would essentially have to go out of business (I kind of hope you are right, for environmental reasons). Most guys I know spray conversion varnish. I used to be one of them. I just can't stand lacquer thinner and the environmental effects of spraying poison into the air...Plus my shop stunk for a few days.

I have never liked water based finishes, for the standard reasons (plastic, purple appearance).

I will be 1500 miles from Denver this weekend, otherwise I'd stop by and learn about shellac.

I'd add that when you Google your industry, be sure to use a local modifier in your search. For example, a potential customer may search for "Handmade bookcase", but will quickly become frustrated with results from all over the country. Suzy web searcher's next search will be "Handmade bookcase in Atlanta" (or wherever she lives). While it would be nice to show up on the first page of Google results for just "Handmade bookcase", the chances are you won't and Suzy searcher won't search there anyway. Optimizing your pages with the types of products you sell and where you sell them is a simple trick to use on your site, that is in line with how people actually find things.

I've created multiple pieces of furniture for several clients, so I definitely agree. If you make it easy and pleasant for a customer to work with you, they won't even think about using another furniture builder for their next project.

Custommade.com, however, does not allow links to "count", so to speak, as they do not wish to bleed page rank (I understand but dislike this). The link counts only as a way to get to a subscriber's site. Confusing, I know. But not all inbound links "count" in google's eyes.

From wikipedia:

"nofollow is a value that can be assigned to the rel attribute of an HTML a element to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring."

Example:

Turner Custom Furniture

Even if this thread did allow links to count (which I'm fairly certain they don't) the above link wouldn't count because of the rel="nofollow" attribute.

Long story short: You can spend an awful lot of time building inbound links, and come to discover that many of them don't matter.

Yep, pain in the butt.

Concerning outbound links: They count a lot less than inbound links (that do count). But search engines like them - links are what the web is about. So, placing a few outbound links to sites that don't compete with yours, and properly targeting the page to open in a new window (so the user never actually leaves your site) is a good idea.

SEO is extraordinarily complicated and not easily surmised. I don't mean to lessen the impact of your post, I just thought I'd chime in with some albeit distressing, information. I spend a great deal of time studying SEO, and I'm still surprised, confused and frustrated. And yet I've had a lot of success.

The question you ask is the big one. Sometimes I think it's the only one that matters. Everything you write is true - I know a few guys who'll launch their standard "I-can't-compete with-China" speech at a moment's notice (I'm one of them!).

In my experience, most clients can be lumped into one of two groups: People looking for one-of-a-kind, heirloom quality furniture, and people looking for a very small modification to an existing furniture store piece. I'm sorry to say that the latter category is (in my experience) by far the larger. And for those people, everything you, and I, and Custommade.com, and the whole universe of craftspeople say on the subject of quality doesn't matter that much. For them, we are simply the custom department of Ikea, or Ethan Allen. Their quality is good enough for what these people need. And they don't want to spend $4k on a spectacular handmade bookcase, when the one in the furniture store would work, if only it was 3" narrower.

I'm not finding fault with those people at all. It's just that trying to use our stock arguments on them is of little use - after all, I must begrudgingly admit that a Haverty's bookcase will actually hold books off the floor.

I have tried the "spend-$4k-now-instead-of-spending-$500-ten-times" speech. But it mostly fails because even in the cases where my arguments are accepted as valid, $500 is a lot easier to come up with than $4000.

I think what is happening here is that the detractors in the crowd are responding to the somewhat (no offense Rob) stilted writing style employed, and not the advice, which is pretty straight forward.

"Key differentiators" = How do you stand out from your competition? What makes you better than the guy down the road, and how can you sell it? Are you the best wood-turner in town? The best at veneering? Emphasize your strengths in your marketing materials. Don't ask your clients to pay twice the price of the furniture maker down the road without giving giving them a good reason.

It doesn't matter if he is a software marketer. Selling is selling. And remember, he does actually design, build and sell furniture. I for one think he's pretty qualified. And Don, I didn't read anything in his post that leads me to believe he's trying to sell me something. And so what if he is. We are all selling something.

Thanks Algae2010. I have received a lot of positive comments from sources outside of this site as well. I wasn't sure how people would take statements like "avoid bad breath...", but I guess it never hurts to touch base with the basics of selling once in a while.

I can't say I use it a lot - 2 projects. It's very expensive. $300 for the 2 foot x 4 foot sheet. You see brass grill on a lot of very old traditional furniture. Bookcases in particular.

I agree, Old Shavings. I can't stand an overly friendly salesperson, even if I'm going to buy a pair of shoes.

Thanks! It was a lot of work.

I always wanted to make one of these. I have my father's big red Mac toolboxes from the 60's. Very functional, but not anywhere near as beautiful!

Thanks!

Thank you both for your comments.

Thank you. I was concerned that I might offend people with my post about not offending people...