We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shane Sick. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shane below.
Shane, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Before starting The Restored Board Design Co., I worked marinas for almost 15 years. You put boats in the water, you take boats out of the water – there’s no finished product at the end of the day and something was just missing for me. I’ve always been handy and started tinkering around in my shop, then on the way home from a friend’s wedding my wife and I played around with the idea of starting a woodworking business to help pay for our own wedding – rather, we bickered about how to afford the wedding we wanted.
The business started as a hobby, part time on my days off. Fast forward four years – The garage turned into a full-blown shop, I took the business full time, and have grown from mainly creating cutting boards to designing and building furniture pieces. There’s always something to learn and be proud of at the end of the day. I’m able to be close for our 9 month old baby girl, Emerson, and spend the time with her that I never would have been able to previously – woodworking did that for me!
Shane, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
The business started VERY small in my case – $60 worth of wood from a woodworker’s scrap pile and some hand-me-down tools. It’s come a long way since then.
We initially started buying wood from other furniture makers and woodworkers – the hardwoods that they couldn’t use on their larger projects turned out to be perfect for the smaller cutting and serving boards that I was starting out with. Over time, I continued to appreciate hardwoods and fine woodworking. My projects started to get larger, and while we don’t always buy scrap wood at this point in the business, we’ve kept our name as a way to honor how we got our start.
We still sell a variety of cutting and servings boards, butcher blocks, and other gifts, but there has definitely been a shift to include more modern, fine furniture pieces. From coffee tables to benches, and dining tables to beds designing a custom piece of furniture is my favorite thing to do. I’m still a one-man show in the shop, and intend for it to stay that way, which allows me to pay special attention to detail on every single piece that I create.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
This is a question for my wife, so I’m turning it over to her!
Hi, I’m Katie, and have helped along the way with product design, branding, marketing and the occasional sanding session when things get really busy. My full time career is in marketing/branding, so Shane actually got really lucky marrying me!
The biggest lesson in social media I could give is CONSISTENCY. We started so small with just our friends and family interacting with posts. From there, I posted as much as I could. It’s not every day and recently with a baby, it’s not even every week, but including your audience on any behind-the-scenes, exciting things in your life, new products, and more will all you to create a connection with them. Over time, we build our audience up to 4,500 Instagram followers and while that’s not huge , we have a great team of supportive customers that follow along with us and want to support our business! Quality over quantity with social media – that’s the goal!
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I am certainly not the only woodworker in Charleston, South Carolina, but I hope that when customers hear our business name, that we stand out because of our quality. A lot of extra sanding and attention to detail are important when it comes to the final finish. It’s something I take a lot of pride in. I think it’s helped us to stand out from the rest!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.therestoredboard.com
- Instagram: @therestoredboard
- Facebook: @therestoredboard
Image Credits
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