We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brenda Clark. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brenda below.
Brenda, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Owning your own business is a dream that many people have, right? This has always been the case for myself and my husband, Mike. When we were first married our business dream was to one day buy out part of his family’s farming operation; ten years into our marriage we could see that was not going to come to fruition. Instead, Mike found a new career path and I went back to school. Mike stayed in the agriculture industry but joined the corporate world, and I went to work for the public schools as a speech-language pathologist. During those years we continued to talk about business ideas but never felt we had found ‘it’…until we went looking for furniture replacements for our family room in our basement. We wanted a specific look–a mixture of traditional yet contemporary plus farmhouse-like with a cabin feel that would fit us. Our search for this type of furniture took us to Wisconsin (we live in Nebraska–not exactly mountain cabin country!) There we met the owners of an independent, successful furniture and decor business. We loved their furniture; we loved how inviting their store was. On our drive back home, our wheels started turning and we wondered, could we bring something like this to Lincoln, Nebraska? When our furniture was delivered months later–it was one of the owners making the delivery, too–we engaged him in conversation about their store concept and how it came to be. High quality furniture, custom designed, customer service that focused on creating unique looks and building lasting relationships, and a small business model that evolved into 20+ years of operation. After several more conversations with the owners, we felt we had possibly found a business we could build and work together well into our retirement years, an idea that would allow me to retire early from my stressful, demanding job and give Mike the opportunity to leave the corporate world. We spent the next two and a half years researching product lines, developing a store plan that made you feel like you were walking into someone’s home, and looking for the right location. In September of 2019, Barnwood & Leather opened its doors.
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?
At Barnwood & Leather we LOVE creating cozy spaces! Our goal is to bring you unique furniture pieces for your everyday home, cabin, or special getaway place. We feature custom designed leather and upholstery furniture pieces along with wood dining, kitchen, bar and occasional tables and bedroom furniture. We work with small businesses and artists close to home as well as with American-based companies. We offer unique, American-made barnwood furniture made by craftsmen who pride themselves in creating each piece. We also offer a line of handcrafted dining furniture pieces made of American hardwoods as well as fabrics and 100% top-grain leather offerings for the rest of your home–all manufactured in the USA. Choose a custom-made dining room table from our American hardwoods line where you pick the wood, the base style (leg, pedestal, or trestle) the top shape, the size, and the stain and finish. Our reclaimed barnwood line offers many styles and table sizes to choose from as well. We can design a rustic, traditional or contemporary feel for you with our leather and upholstery furniture that include many stationary looks as well as manual and power recline options. We are able to offer some custom-built furniture that may help you with those hard-to-find needs.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
After years of planning and researching, going to furniture markets first as observers and then as buyers, finding the right building to move in to, finishing the build-out to complete our look, then overcoming our first obstacle of delayed product shipment, we finally opened our doors mid-September 2019. Though our enthusiasm was high we had completely underestimated how hard it would be to let people know “we are here” and to get them in the door. (Mistake #1 that we now know–more advertising outside of social media is needed when you first get started!) We scheduled our Grand Opening for January 2020 and had a fabulous response–lots of customers in the door and lots of custom orders were placed. We were very pleased with how the year was beginning and felt very encouraged as a brand-new, family owned and operated retail business…but then the pandemic happened. All of our research and planning could have never prepared us for that. The world was shutdown which meant people stopped coming in and our manufacturers stopped production. Here we sat with a store full of furniture and decor, a big chunk of our savings invested into our dream business and limited to no possibility of generating income. We were not designed to be an online store, our whole model was geared towards seeing, feeling, and experiencing what we had to offer at our storefront. I remember the month of April 2020 being excruciating. We had one sale–a small recliner chair–and only 8-10 people come into the store. However, the bills didn’t stop, and we had to pay our one employee, our son-in-law. We found a way to survive 2020 and then the production timeline and supply chain challenges of 2021, and though we have been open for three years now we often say to folks, “Yes, open for three years…but we really haven’t established what a ‘normal year’ is like for us.” Honestly, we had to write-off probably 8-12 months out of that time frame because of the setbacks. We NEVER imagined when we decided to open this business that we would weather all that we had to weather in the first three years of being opened…but we did, and we are still around! We are beyond grateful for our customers, the businesses that worked with us to help us through the tough times, and especially for family and friends who kept encouraging us to persevere.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Our focus at Barnwood & Leather is providing quality products and standing behind what we sell. Customer service is key to us! We are family-owned, family-operated, and that means either myself or my son-in-law helps you with your selections when you come to the store. We know our product lines well and expect a lot from our manufacturers. They stand behind us so we can stand behind our customers. AND, when deliveries are made, it is Mike the owner and our son-in-law who will deliver your pieces (sometimes we recruit one of our other sons to help with deliveries–ha). I know ecommerce has established a strong share of the retail marketplace, but we have found that there are still customers who want to SEE and EXPERIENCE what they are buying before they order it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.barnwoodandleather.com
- Instagram: barnwoodandleather
- Facebook: Barnwood & Leather