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Today's wood furniture market is missing a critical element: character. As we have seen a recent resurgence in antique/vintage furniture resale, we discovered a niche; there is not enough to go around and people are used to getting what they want. Enter: Juniper and Bros Furniture. Since 2019 officially, my wife and I build and finish antique/vintage style solid wood furniture from scratch. We have been successful in the furniture market as we do all kinds of custom items, taking inspiration from primitive and early century furniture. We have yet to come accross a design we cannot replicate and are excited to see what the future holds.
We construct our items with a focus on authentic mortise and tennon style joinery specific to decades past. We hand distress everything to exaggerate wear and tear accross hundreds of years. We custom mix our stains to best replicate older, worn furniture colors and, finally, apply wax in a specific manner to acheive that "patina" everyone relishes from old furniture.
Most of our sales thus far have been from our own designs and creations. A growing portion of our sales is coming from the limiting factor of the antique/vintage wood furniture market: scarcity. Many of our customers send us inspiration photos of a peice of furniture hundreds of years old asking us to replicate the over-all design but with their requested dimensions. We have had enormous success and raving reviews at the results.
Our limiting factor comes down to capital. I was a successful restaurant manager for many years in an industry that fights tooth and nail for a profit. This also means I understand the P&L side of business very well. Additionally, my success was due in part to my ability to hire correctly and train properly; effective team leadership. I am confident we can blossom this business to a multi- million dollar operation . 2023 was our first year doing this 100% full time and we churned out $350k in revenue. Our net profit for the business is 52% on average. Between the two of us we build and finish, make custom boxes, and ship these items nationwide. While my wife and I have honed our own skills to be able to produce 20–30 items a week, we simply cannot pass the threshold on our own. This threshold is our presipice that can very easily be overcome with a larger team. Capital infusion for us would yield major results and help us drive revenue. Our goal would first be to hire additional staff and train them on everything we do in the shop. This small team would become the production specialist. Our next step would be to grow our reach and customer base through effective marketing. This position would have to be hired out to someone very familiar market integrations and inventory syncing so we could connect to multiple sales channels. Finally, we would move our current location to a larger facility where we could have a showroom to drive local impact. This move would be a segue to build a full staff- product specialist in charge of photography and listing material, builders, finishers, and packers.
As mentioned, if the two of us have been able to produce $350,000 in revenue, imagine what 2,4 or 6 more people could accomplish with just simply adding more product- not to mention the runoff increase for building out multiple sales channels and growing the brand.
Our brand also comes with some icing; everything is hand built from common lumber. This means that when style trends change, we don’t have to reinvest in new equipment to manufacture different products, we can simply adapt. I have yet to come across a design I cannot produce to stand the test of time and be well received by the customer. This is a teachable skill and there are plenty of people out there looking for an opportunity to create.