We work as a team helping each other achieve whatever needs to be achieved. The value is real at our most internal level and it continues as we move outside the walls of our studio as we connect with friends, designers, furniture makers, you name it we look at our vendors as our extended community. They are a part of the WoodSmithe family. We also have a family of fellow makers here in the city. We are able to sit with guys like Stephen Kenn and dream aloud about furniture and design, as well as men like Rann Parton and Brendan Ravenhill, who are designing in different fields. There’s something that happens when you are surrounded by these sort of guys it has an effect of you and your thinking. We as a family at WoodSmithe are surrounded by these individuals. We love talking with our friends at Handsome Coffee who are pushing the boundaries of speciality coffee and who are devoted to their craft, or Tyler Stonebreaker at Creative Space, Sean Carasso of Falling Whistles, or the guys at Sew Creative. These friends and neighbors stretch our thinking. It’s the greater WoodSmithe community and we love to see it continue to grow. Your motto is Together We Build, pretty simple but strong. What are your plans for WoodSmithe and
how do you plan to carry out this message? Together We Build is a potent statement for us. It captures our core values and how they play out in our process with clients. We believe that we are leaders in what we do; and one quality of leadership is listening. It’s the reason why we start our process with clients by listening. We also work together collaboratively with our clients, which is what Together We Build is all about. It’s saying let’s dream out loud, show us your napkin sketch, let’s talk about why you drew what you drew. Let’s talk about how we can make it better. Let’s talk about how your project can have the most impact. You’re talking and we’re listening, and then We Build It. We believe this is a timeless strategy for our company. We believe the future is bright for individuals who are willing to take the time to listen and create the most thoughtful products possible no matter what industry you are in. Our commitment to that is going to be the thing that carries us forward into the future. It’s been an amazing thing to see this idea I had about quality and collaboration grown into a full office of individuals committed to the same vision. I never could have dreamed we would be a company of seven and so I’m doubly excited about expanding our thinking,
challenging what we think is possible and looking to the future, knowing the potential that there is. Can you describe the process from first meeting, concept through fruition? WoodSmithe is known for doing two things: Designing and Building. Those two two things are distilled into three steps. Step one: Guidelines. Guidelines is a process were we learn what your brand is about and decide what that should look like and what it materials it should be made from. We also design digital concepts in this phase. Step two is our plans phase. We utilize this step for environments like retail spaces and hospitality design basically projects that require a greater level of depth so we can produce blueprints for the project. Step 3 is components. This is when we get our hands dirty by taking the digital concepts and turning them into reality. Rather it’s a volume merchandising or a single space design we we can prototype and produce. The final step is installation. If you have a project that requires on site work like a retail or hospitality location we will follow the project all the way through the installation. We will be on site to make sure that no detail get overlooked.