We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Spencer Ratliff a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Spencer, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I started my own custom furniture business in 2013 and after just a couple of years of slowly getting started the thought of a shared shop with shared equipment and resources really appealed to me. Not only because I was lonely in my one man shop but because the deeper I got into my business the more I realized just how hard getting stared in this industry really is and it made me want to make it easier for others. So I started a little trial run to see if a shared shop idea could work. I had my own 3,000 square foot shop and I found a few other woodworkers in town and invited them to share my space. It was haphazard, cramped, and disorganized, but the camaraderie proved to me this is really what I wanted to do. Next I started looking for the right building. This was immensely harder than I thought it would be. It was over 3 years of looking for a building. I signed leases, wrote letters of intent for purchase, and warehouse after warehouse fell through. Then I got a notice that my landlord was not going to renew my month to month lease on my current crappy little shop. Feet were put to the fire. I reached out in desperation to a few more local contacts to find a temporary shop and ended up finding the dream location that was WAY better than anything I hoped for. Things moved quickly because they had to and I signed the new lease in April of 2020. Timing was not what I was hoping being that we were one month into a global pandemic and my wife and I just had our first child in January of that year. The move took longer, and cost more than I ever thought but by the first weekend of June we were officially open. We’ve been in our current location for over 3 years now and have grown from 16,000 square ft to 24,000 square ft and have over 25 different businesses running out of Able Trade.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Able Trade is built for woodworking and metalworking entrepreneurs. We are definitely not the first to open a shared maker space but what sets us apart is the goal of giving small businesses a leg up. Not only do we make sure to have all the professional equipment and tools needed for any woodworking or metalworking business but we also have a conference room, a cyc wall photography studio for photographing finished products and host a monthly gallery night open to the public to help advertise and promote all our members. I also run my own furniture business and spent years questioning if I could really make a real career of it. My entire goal in starting Able Trade was to help other entrepreneurs in my industry skip a few hard years of trying to accumulate the space and the tools to just get started.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Well I married her 13 years ago but we became business partners just 2 years ago. My wife Melody was the one who encouraged me to start my own furniture business 10 years ago and she held the reliable steady paycheck job that made it possible for me to follow my dream. I was able to reinvest almost every penny of what I made back into my business for 7 years and then I started Able Trade in addition to my current company Old North Designs. I quickly realized that running two businesses completely on my own was gonna kill me. Meanwhile Melody had been growing her own business skills and for years would enter a company, create a business system, make it more efficient, and then move onto the next company to do it all over again for them. She started helping me in small ways at first like taxes, and business licenses and all the worst parts of running your own business but a year ago we both decided that it was time to direct all her skills to Able Trade and quit the steady paycheck job. It has been a game changing decision and there is no way Able Trade would still be here if it wasn’t for her. Our roles are very different, she doesn’t do any wood working or metal working so I handle the shop needs and she handles the contracts, invoices, insurance, taxes, etc. I know marriage and business partners doesn’t work for everyone but its been a great decision for us! I like getting to spend more hours of the day with my wife and not just the weekends.

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

I consider Able Trade a type of umbrella company. Our primary business is renting studio space and membership access to our tools & equipment but we have continued to add other revenue streams and still have more in the pipeline. We built out a cyc wall photography studio that we give our members access to but rent out by the hour to the public. We offer classes such as intro to woodworking. We provide all the marketing, administration, tools and space for our instructors and then take a cut of the tuition. We have started buying common used materials in bulk and then offer an option to purchase to our members so they save some money and don’t have to worry about transporting. Right now all our studio spaces are full but we want to keep growing our part time members and every other revenue stream so it never puts too much pressure on any one thing.

Contact Info:

• Website: weareabletrade.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abletradeknox

Image Credits
Aaron Ingram Photos and Daniel Clay