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

Hi Matt, thanks for joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

Our upholstery workroom started in my garage. My business partner and I had built up our skills while holding other jobs, and finally taken the leap to doing upholstery full time as our main gig. That running leap from the high dive from stable career into a small business in my garage wasn’t the scariest risk we ended up taking, however.

After our business was established and we’d been operational for about 5 years, we started to realize that we needed to rebuild it. We were thankful to all of the residential clients and personal relationships we’d formed over the years, but in order for our business to grow, we needed to start thinking bigger picture. One-off projects making bespoke furniture was fun, but really hard to scale up. We’d had a handful of commercial clients over the years, many of whom became repeat customers, and we’d realized the value of this type of B to B client.

Transitioning away from the type of work that got us to a stable place in order to clear space for commercial work seemed like a gigantic gamble, but a necessary one. We knew we had to close the door to what got us there in order to make the space for us to be adaptable to larger scale projects.

We buckled in and did it. Reframed how we talked about ourselves, showcased commercial work exclusively, networked to try to meet people in ancillary industries, really sought out relationships that would be instrumental in offering a wider array of services commercial clients would need. Lots of handshakes.

The scariest thing was saying “no, thank you” to residential projects with money ready to spend. Turning off one source of cash flow with the gamble that it would make the space for the right kind of projects. Saying no to paying work is a hard pill to swallow for a small business owner, but it’s paid off. We pretty much exclusively do commercial work now with interior designers, restaurants, architects, mills, and other businesses.

Rebuilding the business while it was moving forward was like changing the tires on a car driving down the freeway, but we figured it out, and it ended up being the best decision we’ve made so far.

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?

Old Town Upholstery is a commercial upholstery shop. We work with all types of businesses to offer custom soft seating, whether that’s bespoke built in booths from the frame up, or dining room chair reupholstery. We can fabricate or reupholster existing seating, but working with us is working directly with the people that work on your project. We’re a small business that scales big. We’ve worked on everything from mom and pop diners to airports, and are enthusiastic about collaborating with our partners in whatever stage of design they are in.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That all business is good business. It’s never the projects that you don’t get that sink you, it’s getting the wrong projects. The wrong type of projects are the albatross, and so it’s important to learn the type of work that is profitable, as well as the type of work you enjoy, and what type of work is just simply a pain in the butt. Morale is just as important as income.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We’ve never taken out loans. We started simply, and put some small money into purchasing tools we would use for the business to work. We worked full time jobs and developed our skills on the side, taking on projects that challenged us but were within our abilities. We worked out of my garage to start, and have been conservative in our growth. We’ve always used the money we made from our work to pay for our expenses, then ourselves, and then make capital investments incrementally. I’m thankful we’ve taken this approach because I’ve watched businesses that grow fast die fast. We’ve scaled up, both with staff and equipment, as needed and tried to be thoughtful about where investments would maximize both profit and quality of life.

I think in large part, having no debt has allowed us to have what we have now, working 4 days a week in a 2500 sq ft workshop, still a small staff with 3 of us, but our quality of life is great because we haven’t saddled ourselves with too much debt in order to chase big business ideals.

Contact Info:

• Website: oldtownupholstery.com
• Instagram: old.town.upholstery