We recently connected with Jodi & Sam Krantz and have shared our conversation below.
Jodi & Sam, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.
Family is the core of Ohio Wood and Iron Works! Our shop began as a father-daughter operation, and has expanded to a point where everyone in our family is involved. We have always been a close family, and therefore we approach business with the same household values that have grown strong over the years. Our company is comprised of my parents, and my brother and I. Together, we have endured life’s rollercoaster of successes and challenges during our business journey. We each have different strengths and talents, which when combined, create a rewarding venture.
Truly a family affair; Sam, our blacksmith, and creator, welcomes the morning’s orders and heads out to the forge for a day of working on the anvil. Terrie, our director of shipping and accounting, assures that all orders are correct, well packaged, and shipped promptly. Jodi is our head of marketing and customer service. She enjoys interacting with customers during the sales process and providing a personalized approach. Justin is our newest blacksmith and machinist/welder. He is very comfortable putting his own spin on custom orders, utilizing the CNC plasma table.
Jodi & Sam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Our story really began early on when I was a toddler, as our craftsman and blacksmith (otherwise known to me as “Dad”) had me wearing a child’s tool belt complete with plastic tool set around the house and helping him with small projects. He taught my brother and I the valuable skill of working with our hands at a young age. Over the years, I’ve worked with Dad achieving a diverse array of knowledge in the construction field. The skills I have learned and the time spent together is irreplaceable. Sometimes, I still need a little assistance with reading a tape measure, but that will come someday, right?
As time moved ahead, I could see Dad thoroughly enjoyed and took great pride in making custom furniture. I was driven to find a way to show the world his amazing ability but wasn’t sure how to reach out. A friend told me about Etsy, and suddenly, our shop was born! It’s been a blessing to have such wonderful customers and a joy knowing our pieces are loved in homes across the globe.
Not only do we love making things with our hands, but it also helps to have a “cool” place to make them in! Our shop is actually an old one-room schoolhouse built in the late 1800s. Purchased in 1999, we have worked hard to restore it and preserve its historic value. The slate we use in our trivets is slate that was left from the original dwelling. “The shop,” as we call it, has been such a tremendous part of our lives we even used it in our logo (that’s the sketch you see). Our chalkboards are also salvaged from a local high school. I take great joy in hunting and using salvaged materials. I love looking at a piece in front of me wondering what all it has seen over the years and what the story is behind it; we’ll never know. I think about how it was made back then, without power tools and assembly lines. Someone’s hard work, time, and sweat went into those salvaged pieces, and if it weren’t for people who appreciate them, they may be forgotten.
We put heart and soul into every project. Each piece is made uniquely by hand in our shop and is built to be lasting and functional. All materials used are made in the USA. All items are handmade by Sam, never anyone else to assure quality and uniqueness. We take pride in the quality of small business and would never compromise our customer satisfaction to assembly lines or substandard materials. Our shop has evolved into even more of a family business, as my mother and brother have joined us! Each one of us brings a different skill and task to the table, and we couldn’t do this without a team effort!
Our work is hand-forged ironware. We employ old-school methods to shape and connect our pieces. We typically have a standard product line but accept many various types of custom product requests. Some of our favorites include a 48″ high coconut wood mirrored wall organizer, industrial carpenter’s style wooden beverage bar, an iron cross with the silhouette of Jesus, a beautiful Advent wreath adorned with handmade iron roses, custom pot racks, and a 48″ diameter quarter sawn white oak table.
We are well known for our Christmas Advent wreaths, our heavy-duty firewood tongs (great gift idea!), and we’ve been told our peony stakes are the “Cadillac” of flower grates!
We are most proud of the fact that we started our business from nothing- and can now say we have our handmade products finding homes in places as far as Australia, Dubai, Germany, Canada, Hawaii, and the United Kingdom!
We believe our customer service and our competitively priced items allow us to provide the client with a memorable, heirloom quality piece.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
One of our struggles was developing product lines that were needed by consumers, but yet still allowed us to make the items by hand perfecting our craft. Some other challenges came during the Covid-19 pandemic. We saw a spike in sales from those working from home or those staying home for safety reasons. We were elated to see sales increasing but faced supply chain problems with getting the materials necessary to make the products. There were delays and shortages with our materials, but fortunately for us, our many valued customers were so gracious about waiting!
As sales increased, we needed to make major changes in our shipping department. We upgraded to better boxes, packing material and upped our game with new branding/logo stamps and business cards to send with each order as a cherry on top.
The biggest surprise challenge came in December 2020 when, during a routine work day, the structural floor system collapsed in our shop. The 90+-year-old floor joists reached the end of their lifetime. As a result, we quickly temporarily supported the floor while completing Christmas holiday orders. Over the course of the next seven months, we worked on lifting the building off of her foundation to make repairs. Rim joists, floor joists, bottom plates, subfloor, wall framing repairs, and ventilation were all redone, and today she is good as new! Again, this was all brought upon us during the pandemic, so we worked around supply chain issues to repair our beloved shop.
How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.
We sell our handmade items on our Etsy shop site: Ohio Wood and Iron Works. We began using this particular maker’s platform in April of 2011, and since then have met so many amazing clients from all over the world. We have shipped to Dubai, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, various places in the U.S., and we’ve also had the pleasure of meeting some clients in person. Local deliveries have been a great option for us, especially when it comes to large pieces of custom furniture. Recently, we met a valued client and his wife to deliver a custom iron and oak table. This was one of the many items we have created over the years for their new home. It was wonderful to finally meet them in person, and they were gracious enough to bring us some of their local cheese from NY!
My brother and I have also recently branched out and established another Etsy shop, Burnin’ Daylight Co., geared toward CNC machining designs, such as metal signs for home & business, custom stocking hangers, and mailbox brackets! Etsy allows us to maintain a personal approach to customer service, something that is uncommon today when shopping large markets. Clients are always free to call and discuss important specifications with us, and they know they’ll get a prompt response.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/OhioWoodandIronWorks
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ohiowoodandironworks/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkL090wNQO8&t=115s