We recently connected with Leigh Spencer and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Leigh thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
There is a time of year that is typically slower in terms of inquiries, and we always have to be careful not to take a job that doesn’t seem quite right, even if I am concerned about gaps in the production schedule. This was late in 2021. We had a lot of work in queue, but I was still concerned about a Q1 slow down in 2022.
We met a talented professional through one of our interior design customers who wanted to develop a line of tables. It was a referral. We knew his work was exceptional and he had done the pieces before as custom one-off pieces with a millwork shop. He agreed we could value engineer for small batch manufacturing, but once we got into the process, he was attached to certain details. It was a slow start.
The tables specified baltic birch, which is from Russia. The war in Ukraine started. We purchased a unit of the material, already inflated in price to try to secure a supply during the process.
By Q2, we still hadn’t been able to get the pieces completed and our biggest contract yet kicked in with a hard deadline in July. We prioritized that work and I continued to get frustrated emails from the designer, asking when the tables would be ready. Fair enough.
This is what we call a cursed job. It hard and you aren’t making money on it, so you start to ignore it, so you make more mistakes.
After specification changes that were missed (on both sides) and multiple stops and starts. The project moved from maker to maker in the shop. Finally, we finished all but one of the pieces.
I got a text a week later from the driver going to a second location, with a picture of a trailer that had clearly caught on fire and all the contents we ashes.
ASHES! I was in a room with several other furniture industry people at the time and none of them had seen anything like it. Except that there are always crazy things that go on in business.
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?
Leigh Spencer moved to Birmingham, Alabama in 2016 to start Alabama Sawyer (Alasaw). The company mills local urban trees for furniture and beautiful objects designed to delight and endure. Under her leadership, the company has since won a grant in the EDPA’s Launchpad competition. They were they overall winner in Garden and Gun magazine’s Made in the South awards. And they are rapidly growing a local and national clientele.
Leigh is a graphic designer by training and wood-obsessed by marriage. Before transitioning to running Cliff Spencer Furniture Maker in Los Angeles, where she developed her business skills, Leigh worked as a senior designer at ING, the financial services company, she spearheaded a grass roots effort to educate employees and initiate change within the company on environmental practices. The effort went nationwide, influencing the company’s purchasing decisions from recycled paper to green energy. She was recognized by global management. She earned a BA (along with Phi Beta Kappa and Cum Laude) at UCSB and a BFA with honors at Otis College of Art and Design. She has won multiple graphic design awards. She earned the LEED Green Associate credential and completed the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program as part of the first Los Angeles cohort. She is alumni of Leadership Birmingham’s Class of 2019. Cliff and Leigh have two great kids and one cool cat.
Leigh runs the “clean” operations of Alabama Sawyer from sales, marketing and design to business administration.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
On a project of any volume, I hand write cards and have the whole crew sign them. We write little notes on the packing slips of small packages and throw in branded swag. We send repeat firms gifts. We have a newsletter that tries to keep us top of mind on a monthly bases. Social media.
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
We have a shopify site that accounts for about 10% of our sales. We have a few partners that sell our products dropshop , either wholesale or with a commission.
Our small products used to be on etsy, but we found it wasn’t enough of the right market. We were undersold and knocked off a lot. From design to advertising copy… and you didn’t own your customer. We’ve been off it for a while, so things may have changed.
We did Amazon for a very short time and found the customers were more likely to return the product and they didn’t take care when re-packing, so the losses and wasted time were not worth it.
You have to remember that these platforms are selling to you and will always say that they have your market and can be very persuasive.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alasaw.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alabamasawyer/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alabamasawyer/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/22300156/admin/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/alabama-sawyer-birmingham
Image Credits
Cary Norton