We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris Panjwani. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris below.

Chris, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

To satisfy today’s impatient consumer who is used to two-day delivery on practically everything, many furniture retailers have started selling mass produced pieces, which are often made in factories abroad out of artificial wood substitutes. While this type of furniture often arrives relatively quickly and is cheap, that speed comes with a cost—quality.

At Contemporary Craftsman Furniture we have chosen to prioritize quality and longevity over speed. Every piece of furniture we sell is custom built in American by Amish craftsman, specifically for each individual customer. We only use sustainably harvested solid wood, so our pieces last for generations. Nothing is shipped across the globe, saving on fossil fuel pollution, and supporting the American economy. These benefits come with a tradeoff—it takes approximately 12-24 weeks from purchase to delivery. But we believe owning made-to-order handcrafted, American-made wood furniture is worth the wait and hopefully our customers do too.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

We are a family-owned small business inspired by our own furniture shopping experience. After my wife and I bought our first home in New Jersey in 2018, we started searching for furniture at the big box stores near us and were disappointed but what we found. Everything was mass produced and made from artificial wood products that we knew from experience wouldn’t hold up and were full of toxic chemicals that we didn’t want in our home. Plus since we had to furnish almost our entire house all at once, we wanted everything to have a cohesive look, and mixing and matching pieces from multiple stores made that almost impossible to achieve.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We choose to exclusively sell on our website and not use outside platforms like Amazon and Etsy. We are selling an heirloom quality, luxury good and we want the user shopping experience to reflect that. When dealing with third-party websites you do not have full control over how your products are presented, which can sometimes result in a poor quality or confusing user experience. On our website we can fully control the shopping experience, presenting our products in a manner which is both visually appealing to the shopper as well as straight forward and easy to understand. We can also offer special features that make the customization process easier, such as our online preview option, which allows potential customers to view how their stain selections will look on each of our pieces. We can also provide educational materials which help potential customers understand the value of our products.

In addition, selling only our own website allows us to provide a more personalized approach. We have a live chat option as well as our direct contact information so that customers can easily ask questions as they shop. We are selling a product which has a higher price point than most items purchased online, so we want to make sure our customers feel 100% confident in what they are buying. We speak directly with every customer throughout their shopping process, often assisting them in making selections and customizations and discussing timelines, and payment options.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We are selling a high-end product online that is traditionally sold in stores. That requires our customers to have a lot of trust that we are going to provide the quality product we have promised. To build that trust, we are completely transparent with our customers. We don’t offer gimmicks or sales, our prices stay consistent because our costs stay consistent. We don’t make promises we can’t keep regarding speed of delivery; our timelines can be sometimes be longer and we are very upfront regarding that from day one and continue to update the customer if there are any changes. We communicate with our customers throughout their buying process, offering samples and sending additional photos and drawings from our crafters when needed. We have even had video calls with potential customers where we show them the Amish furniture we have in our own home. We also offer a lifetime guarantee on all our pieces. Our main goal is to make sure that our customers understand that we are 100% behind what we sell.

In addition to building trust with our customers, we have also worked to build our reputation with industry peers, forming relationships with other home furnishing vendors as well as interior designers. We are a industry member of the NJ chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers and have formed many significant relationships with leaders in that space.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://contemporary-craftsman.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/contemporarycraftsman/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/contemporarycraftsman
• Linkedin: n/a
• Twitter: n/a

Image Credits
Photos provided by Contemporary Craftsman Furniture