We recently connected with Ted Loewen and have shared our conversation below.

Ted, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, one thing many business owners consider is donating a percentage of sales or profits to an organization or cause. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the story behind how and why you chose the cause or organization you donate to.

We grew up with a strong sense that giving a tenth of what we earn was important. Each quarter we sit down with our team and everyone gets to recommend agencies that are doing good things to be recipients of our donations. Once we have a list everyone is happy with, we divy up the funds between them. Some of the organizations are doing international work, some national and some local. Examples would be the Red Cross, Wild Fire Relief and local Food Banks. We try to always include some organizations that are active in the Arts as well.

Ted, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I got into the furniture business in 1989 right after I got my post secondary education. I worked for a large company and was lucky enough to do lots of different things. Logistics / Finance / Import / Manufacturing . . . lots. It was terrifically fun.

I had a chance to buy my own firm in 1998 with the help of some of my work colleagues and have been self employed ever since.

Josh and I started Loewen Design seven years ago and have many more good days than bad. Lots of challenges, for sure, but a rewarding experience and fun to work in a small team with a large amount of independence.

We focus on dining tables. Everyone needs one of these as eating and playing games and building a family and community all find a home around a table. The problem with dining tables, is that most customers only buy a small number of them in their lifetime. So furniture stores would much rather show sofas and appliances than they would dining tables. So finding good options is hard. Also, tables are big and bulky and use up more than. their fair share of store space. By specializing in dining tables (and conference room tables and a few others), and by being very willing to build tables to spec, we’ve found a nice group of customers that support us.

We build our tables only with solid woods – mostly hardwoods – and with only the best finishes. We’re blessed to have great customers and there seems to be a new idea in the shop most every week.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We’ve always said – “if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

While there isn’t a nice little story that illustrates resilience, maybe it can just be summed up by saying that there are lots of 100 hour weeks. Lots of them. and then more. And talking to friends and customers about what they think should be the focus or what they like or don’t like about a product or service . . . . constantly challenging. But mostly. . . . just putting in the time.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I was involved with a furniture store in downtown Toronto in the 2012 to 2016 era and we did lots of fun things. The commute into the city and some difficulty with a partner that viewed the world through different eyes allowed for the idea of developing the online market for a subset of the products we were building.

CoVid was a blessing for our business. Local manufacturing meant that we didn’t have to wait for imports that other retailers were waiting for. And with everyone home, getting a decent table became a priority. The team is growing nicely and we’re starting to get some work / life balance.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.loewendesignstudios.com