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

Hi Jay, thanks for joining us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

I will say that asking friends and family to support your business is perfectly acceptable. The reason behind this is that support does not always cost money, With a lot of my business happening on social media and word of mouth, a simple share on a post or just listening to others to see if I could help them with an idea they may have talked about. I will say that there is a line, that line being just because you are a friend or family, my work does not come free. Businesses have expenses and they are not cheap in these times.

I will give the biggest shout outs to two of my biggest supporters, Pam Kuderik my mother has always sent me good luck texts and always asks how my product shows are coming and if I am hitting the goal I set for myself. THANKS MOM! The other goes to Debi Perkins. Debi has been such a huge supporter by sharing my product posts, sending me new ideas. Then being the first to PURCHASE some of my new items when they get posted. THANK YOU DEBI!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Kentucky Creations of Michigan is a small woodworking business located in Southeast Michigan. At Kentucky Creations we create several things all inspired by the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. This company started in January 2019 by making a coffee table inside during the middle if winter. This sparked some inspirations and a trip to Kentucky to get some supplies. This only opened the door to the things we come up with today. Since we started we have grown into customized orders, working with restaurants and distilleries in Metro Detroit. You can find some of our stuff inside Flowers of Vietnam in Southwest Detroit,

Kentucky Creations is just what you think it is, everything we do is made from a Kentucky Bourbon Barrel. With the law stating you can only use an oak barrel once for any type of alcohol… this leaves us with quite a few barrels we can work with. You will see that we use all parts of the barrels in our inventory for several different items in our product line.

If you have an idea, please feel free to send us a message on our social @kycreationsmi

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

I will say our customer base has grown a lot over the past year. With wanting to put more time into the business, we decided to venture our brand out into market areas farther away from the home office. Well, this was the best decision for us. When we expanded our market area and started popping up at new vendor shows or craft fairs, the response was overwhelming. So many customers were excited because we were different, we had a niche. It was home décor or something they have been looking for locally for a while. This was the greatest sense that we were on to something,

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Just recently, I was faced with some mental challenges. I was working in retail as a manager, being stressed out everyday at work, not liking the environment I was in. I was coming home after work, binge eating then doing it all over again and again. I took a stand for my health. MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS! I decided to quit my job, not knowing how I was going to make ends meet. I devoted my time and energy to the business. I booked more pop up events, started creating more inventory, posting products more. I made it work! This was a huge pivot for myself, but it was a great benefit to the business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kycreationsmi.com
• Facebook: @kycreationsmi
• Other: 734-727-6590 kycreationsmi@gmail.com