Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Robbie Lambert. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Robbie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

The first barrels that my Father and I worked on were a labor of love—furniture from my own wedding. I looked everywhere for barrels and could not find them anywhere. Finally a few months before my wedding one of my friends sent me a link to a social post from a brewery saying they had some for sale. I quickly contacted them and bought all 6 of them. They were in rough shape; bands rusted, heavy beer stains, stinky, and dark aged wood. I removed the rust, sanded the wood down smoothly, and applied a finish coat. I could not believe how fresh and new they looked. The dark and light tones of the white oak were really eye-catching and I was excited to use them for my wedding. Fast forward a couple of months after my wedding, I listed the barrels for sale on Craigslist and they sold immediately. I was impressed by how much attention they got so I decided to continue looking for more barrels. I found more, then sold them as quickly as the first batch. A couple of weeks later my grandparent’s empty garage had barrels filled to the brim and I was selling them as fast as I found them. I had seen a picture online of some barrel furniture and thought to myself, my Father and I could definitely make that, and if the barrels were selling well maybe some barrel furniture would as well.
His job involved a lot of woodworking, and he was always so creative, so I knew with his help we could make something cool.

We ended up making a half-barrel open cabinet that could house bottles on a bottom and middle shelf. We posted it to social media to show family and friends what we built. After it received a lot of attention online, we quickly had ten orders ready to fill for the half-barrel cabinet. “I sat down with my father and I said, ‘I think we have something here., we either go all in or we don’t.” We invested in launching a brand and website in late 2015 and got to work on new furniture designs. I love creating new things so I was excited. In addition to our day jobs my father and I were working 16-18 hour days, sometimes late into the night. We created about 30 new products, hired a photographer, and launched our website in June of 2016. There wasn’t a lot of planning, it was create and go fast. We launched fast and improved fast. It may not have been the traditional method but I believe, looking back, that if we had planned it out and taken our time we would have never launched.

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

Motor City Barrels (MCB) from the beginning has been about recycling and upcycling products to better our environment. At first for me, it was a quest to find whiskey barrels but the more I learned, a lot of these barrels were being tossed to waste dumps. Upcycling whiskey barrels into furniture, I knew we had to make the brand about being sustainable and upcycling products. MCB prides itself on making the highest quality products. We knew from the beginning that there would be many other makers out there making barrel furniture so our goal from the beginning was to be the best and most creative. Not only do we have our standard lineup of furniture but we also make custom projects. We have built an entire wine cellar room from reclaimed wood, cabinets, benches, tables, and of course wine barrel furniture. We have also built an entire whiskey barrel-themed room with a dartboard cabinet, a full whiskey barrel bar with custom barrel bar stools, side tables, and more. In addition, we have built custom barrel stave walls for commercial properties. These walls are completely made from whiskey barrels. White oak from the whiskey barrels is a premium wood so we knew anything we built we had to choose grand materials to match. I think what sets us apart is the quality of our products, we use a very high-end finish and premium materials and take our time to craft the highest quality. Our products are different from other barrel furniture makers as well. Sure we have the typical barrel furniture pieces but we set ourselves apart by making some original products such as our whiskey barrel arcades, arc series coffee table, atom table, and smoked cocktail kits. The cocktail kits are the product I am most proud of. It is something I created myself. I saw the rise in popularity of smoking cocktails and I thought we could easily make some barrel wood into smoking boards. We quickly tested it out at a craft show and sold out in less than an hour. From there we continued to sell out through the holiday season. I researched suppliers to create a kit that would give you everything you needed to smoke a cocktail – 2 glasses, 1 torch, authentic whiskey barrel wood, and a fancy box to house it all. It was not long until the Aroma series cocktail kit became our number-one bestseller. We then went on to make our 2nd best seller the infusion kit which allows you to make the drink first and then smoke the cocktail after using a whiskey barrel wood top piece and barrel wood chips. Not soon after we started making unique flavored chips such as coffee vanilla using real coffee beans, apple cinnamon using real cinnamon chips, and banana cream. From the start of creating our business, I always wanted to be sure we had happy and satisfied customers. It’s incredibly important to us that our customers are happy with their orders and our products. Being a customer myself and having good and bad experiences I wanted to make sure we were one of the companies where customers always had a good experience.

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

When we decided to launch the brand and website my father and invested $3000 each into the business. Quickly we realized it wasn’t enough so then we started to utilize interest-free credit cards. We had to buy barrels in bulk for us to hit decent margins so it was a big chunk of change for us. About 1 year later we got approved for an SBA loan which helped get us to the next level and hire more employees to make new products and keep up with orders.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

I knew we needed some email marketing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday so I started posting for contract jobs on Upwork. There were many that applied to make the few emails I was requesting but I got an application that offered more than just the black friday emails. We set up a call and the company explained how we could scale with email marketing. The cost was $1500 a month and at the time that would have been a big risk for us as we only spent around $500 on marketing per month. I decided to jump in seeing the holidays were coming up and I really wanted to capitalize on the season. Looking back this was an excellent decision and has significantly increased our overall sales. We had a similar situation with Google ads. Right when covid hit I was looking into Google ads/analytics and found a management company who said they could help us. It was about $2000 down and $650 a month, I was nervous as I didn’t know much about Google ads but I knew we had to increase our marketing spend. It was also the beginning of covid so I was unsure if sales would drop further and if it was wise to spend more on marketing during that time. In the end it was the right choice and we again increased sales overall using google ads.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.motorcitybarrels.com
• Instagram: @motorcitybarrels
• Facebook: facebook.com/motorcitybarrels
• Twitter: @mcbarrels
• Youtube: @motorcitybarrels6927

Image Credits
brian craig photography