We recently connected with Leroy Hite and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Leroy, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
Everything we do is different than the industry standard! The firewood industry standard for is called “seasoned” firewood. To season wood, providers typically let it sit outside on the ground for 12 months to rot and “dry out.” Over 12 months, any number of pests make their home in the wood, and mold and fungus can grow on or between any logs that have moisture. When you buy firewood at a grocery store or gas station, you likely don’t know what type of wood you are buying either. At Cutting Edge, we hand-select our wood, put it through our special drying ovens and then and inspect it to ensure it is free of mold, pests or fungus. We cut it to exacting standards and group it by hardwood species. Our business strategy, branding, customer service and all-around experience is a premium-quality experience.
Cutting Edge’s brand sets us apart from well-established companies outside our industry. Our white-glove customer service is unmatched and our product quality didn’t exist. We reimagined everything about the firewood industry so that our packaging, logistics and all the little things we include with our products improve the experience and exceed our customers’ expectations.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
The love for fire is universal, almost primal. From the 3-year-old little girl in Georgia, to the 83-year-old man in Uganda – people are drawn to the flame and the warmth as they gather around it. I had that aha moment, and I saw an opportunity to be a different kind of firewood source. I created Cutting Edge to provide the best firewood and cooking wood hands down. There had to be alternatives to buying the moldy, pest-ridden wood from the little bags at the convenience store or grocery stores and that’s what I set out to do.
After graduating, I worked at Chick-fil-A for a year and considered becoming an Owner Operator. I then worked with Enterprise Rent-A-Car for three years, before moving onto a respectable corporate job in downtown Atlanta.
Even while working for others, I had this weird obsession about firewood. My wife and I joked that when my old 93 GEO Prizm with 266,000 miles (I came from humble, some would say poor, means) broke down, that I’d buy a truck and start the firewood business on the side. Two months into the new job, the Prizm broke down one Friday and it was going to cost $5K to fix a car worth $300. On Saturday, I prayerfully considered if I should go ahead with the purchase of a truck and by the end of the day, I decided to take a small “leap of faith” and start the firewood company on the side. On Monday, I went to work and they fired me on the spot. I still don’t know why.
My leap of faith quickly turned into a full-time job, and absolutely no one (other than my wife) thought I should do this. I needed that push, to be fired, in order to force me to take a chance and start the world’s first ultra-premium firewood and cooking wood company.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The business was growing steadily, and in late 2015, one of my suppliers went out of business. I opted to take over their facilities, their rent and bought their equipment. I took on this expense from my former supplier in anticipation of servicing a national grocery chain as their back-up supplier. I knew the grocery chain always ran out of firewood with their main suppliers each year. Unfortunately, it was the warmest winter on record in Georgia, and I didn’t sell a single piece of firewood to the grocery chain. I was burning through $40K a month and I was running out of money fast.
By late January 2016, I was completely out of money. One morning I woke up and I knew needed $10K for rent and I didn’t know where it was going to come from. A guy called me and asked to see a piece of equipment I had. I sold a piece of equipment that unloaded logs from trucks for $10K, and I walked the money right across the street to pay the rent. Not only could I not get anymore wood, I also needed another 8K the next week. I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I was basically at square one again. I had a customer list, outdated website and a box truck. I tried to get a second mortgage on my house, but no bank would loan me money. I went to my wife and said “hey babe, let’s sell our house and invest it in the business.. At the time, we had two young daughters at home, and she was 8 months pregnant with our third! She really trusted me and agreed to sell the house and move into a rental home.
We used the funds from our house sale to get a warehouse, refresh the brand, launch a new website and hire excellent employees. The two amazing suppliers I work with today, also happened to cold call me that summer to establish a relationship and we are still working together now.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In 2020, we all experienced a completely new reality with the pandemic. People were staying home and many that opted to gather did so outside by fireplaces and firepits, so demand for firewood and cooking wood grew. We were already skilled at contactless delivery, so we perfected that at the same time we streamlined our shipping and fulfillment process. It was only in 2019 that we had our first customer outside of Georgia, but by 2021 half of our revenue was from outside of Georgia. The pandemic really made us pivot and consider expansion of our product lines and shipping. To keep up with demand for cooking wood (as people cooked at home and outside, we expanded our cooking/smoking wood offerings and began selling pizza wood.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://cuttingedgefirewood.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cutting.edge.firewood/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cuttingedgefirewood
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/firewoodandcookingwood/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CEFirewood
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9xwEZZK9_R5LLnVf2urrzA/videos
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cutting-edge-firewood-peachtree-corners
- Other: https://www.cuttingedgefirewood.com/cooking-firewood/