We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessica & Caleb Walston a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jessica & Caleb, thanks for joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea.

As a husband and wife owned business we started with a simple little mistake building a barn door for our own home. We learned and grew from it and started selling different door styles, colors, sizes, etc. all out of the comfort of our garage. We quickly outgrew the garage and moved into about an 1800 sq foot shop in the west bottoms. After about 18 months we moved on to our current location in North Kansas City with another 1800 sq feet. Recently, we expanded into a total of 3,820 sq feet of combined shop and showroom space and are looking forward to serving the KC area with our new storefront showroom!

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

We are a husband and wife owned business that we started in 2016. We actually didn’t start with a carpentry or woodworking background. At the time we started, Jessica was a nurse and I worked at a local Healthcare IT company. After purchasing our first home, we were doing renovations and Jessica wanted a barn door. We couldn’t afford to order one online at the time so I built one. While the door was great and we got a lot of comments on it, it was a little too small for the opening for which it was built. I decided to see if we could sell it and sure enough someone came and got it that day. We worked from the garage on the side for the first year or so, mostly selling doors on Marketplace and Craigslist until Jessica built a website and we got some regular homebuilder customers.

We create custom doors and most recently a lot of wall panels. There are a lot of homes that have oversized door openings that lead to a master bathroom or office that aren’t good fits for traditional hinged doors. Sliding barn/track doors are a great solution to close off these openings as well as make a statement piece to make a room or office standout.

In the beginning, our work was all rustic and handcrafted with wood planks. We’ve evolved over the years to produce amazing modern designs by CNC Router. We can then take these designs and press them onto our PolyCompression Core (™). This allows us to create a very stable product where design capabilities are limitless.

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

We actually just recently pivoted and brought out two new lines of doors featuring our PolyCompression Core (™), which are our Builder Series and Designer Series. Until the last year, our core product line featured handcrafted doors made of solid wood planks. As with many materials, the pandemic brought upon shortages and increased prices in wood, paint, labor, shipping, etc. and to stay in business our prices had to rise considerably. To combat this, we developed a solid hybrid core that is very stable and durable that we combine with engineered wood panels featuring mdf, alder, and white oak. While we still do offer some designs in solid wood, the PolyCompression Core allows us to still create a large majority of our designs such as our fluted (fluted), reeded (reeded), and modern slat (modern slat) designs but with more efficiency and at a fraction of the material cost which we can then transfer to our customers.

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

I think what has helped the most is that when our customers interact with our team they get the sense that we just want to help. Whether they speak to us on the phone, in our showroom, or our installers in their homes, our team is knowledgeable and honest and we want to do everything we can to make their vision a reality.

Contact Info:

• Website: walstondoorcompany.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/walstondoorcompany/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WalstonDoorCompany/

Image Credits
Jessica Walston