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

CRAIG, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

My business journey was more of an evolution than an idea I had and a decision to pursue that idea. There was always this idea of wanting to work for myself, to start my own business but I really didn’t know what that could be for a long time. Separately, I have always enjoyed manual labor, working with my hands, building things. Once we bought a house I started tackling some small furniture pieces for our home. Slowly, friends and family took notice and asked if I could build something for them. I began building a proper workshop and growing my skills over the next couple years. I would take on some custom furniture orders here and there. Eventually those orders became more consistent, and I decided to start my LLC, purely as a side hustle, not really thinking about it like a full time business. Over the next 2-3 years this snowball just continued to grow and grow and I started re-evaluating my full time job and what I wanted to do with my career. I started to look a lot more closely at the prospect of running the furniture business full time. I set a plan to save a certain amount of money as a safety while also making sure my woodshop could accommodate this increased load. The pandemic, along with several large commissions all at once offered an inflection point. I knew I couldn’t complete those commissions while working a full time job. For over 2 years I had consistent orders coming in and was turning many away b/c I was too busy. So in May 2021 I decided to take the leap and began working full time with DeCicco Woodshop.

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?

My name is Craig DeCicco. I’m the sole operator/owner of DeCicco Woodshop, a small custom furniture shop. I’m a US Marine veteran, husband, expectant father and cat dad. I’m a mostly self taught woodworker. I’ve been building and crafting for what seems like all of my adult life but really started to focus on custom furniture in the last 5 years or so. I specialize in large, solid wood, slab dining tables and consoles but work on a huge variety of pieces. Every commission is 100% custom. Some clients bring me their ideas and I help bring them to life. Some clients bring me inspiration and I design something that I think fits their vision. Dining tables are a really special piece of furniture to me. I feel like our lives often center around them. So many core memories include bringing family and friends together for a big meal. I love being able to provide that setting for other families. There is something so unique to solid wood furniture. I can feel the connection to the tree when I run my hands along it that I don’t get with veneered or manufactured wood products. I hope my clients can feel that same connection when they sit down with their families. I understand there can seem a bit of contradiction. I love these trees but my business is in a small way supporting their removal. I mostly use trees that are salvaged locally from storm damage and trees taken out of people’s yards and developments. They would often end up in land fills. Trees give us so much, I try to honor them with a second life. We also support local land conservation and tree planting initiatives.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I started building furniture for myself several years ago. At a party some friends took notice of a dining table I had recently built. They asked if I’d be interested in building one for them. I kind of shrugged and said sure! So we designed a dining table and I built it for them. Coming off the high of that sale I kind of put it out there to a lot of other friends and family, “Does anyone else want anything?”. Very slowly I started building a portfolio of work and with the help of a website and social media I was able to continue growing. Building more and more unique, stunning pieces of furniture. Each one leading to more and more referrals. After a few years of doing this, the side hustle was taking up pretty much all of my free time. My wife and I started to really consider is this is something I could do full time. We decided I needed to save a certain amount of money as a safety net and once I hit that, took the leap to full time.

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

Quality in all aspect of my work. Quality relationships and communication with me clients. Every relationship I build and piece of furniture I create equals dozens of referrals. Friends and family will see these pieces of furniture and ask “where’s that from?” and I want my clients to be thrilled to tell them it was me. At the same time, quality of the work must be there. These are heirloom furniture pieces built with classic joinery that will last for generations. As long as I can keep providing that quality I know my reputation will continue to grow.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.deciccowoodshop.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/decicco_woodshop/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeCiccoWoodshop

Image Credits
Adam Trevillian