Scaling Handmade Furniture With Factory-Floor Discipline: Kwadwo Som-Pimpong on Building Crafted Glory
Manufacturing Happy Hour
Kwadwo Som-Pimpong runs Crafted Glory, a small-batch handmade furniture practice in Asheville, North Carolina, while also working 10-hour shifts as a fabrication supervisor at Eaton. On Manufacturing Happy Hour, host Chris asks how a business built on craftsmanship can grow without losing what makes it distinctive. Som-Pimpong's answer draws on engineering training and industrial manufacturing experience. The goal is to keep the craft but systematize it, so that, in his words, "I can step away, bring someone in, train them to the documentation, and they can come in and do the same thing that I do and better."
An Aesthetic Between Scandinavia and Ghana
Som-Pimpong started making furniture in 2015 and started selling it in 2017. The early work was Scandinavian-inspired, largely because that was the style used by the people he was learning from, and it was what the Etsy shop that launched his sales was built on.
Over time, Som-Pimpong felt something was missing: cultural heritage. The family is from Ghana, and so is the wife Som-Pimpong married about three years before the interview. Traveling to Ghana more often and connecting more deeply with the culture raised a question: why avoid that heritage in the work, rather than celebrate it and show people what Ghanaian and West African design is like? In recent years Crafted Glory has moved in that direction, though Som-Pimpong still loves Scandinavian design and describes the current work as bringing the two together.
The host said the furniture seemed to combine smooth, somewhat symmetrical Scandinavian elements with rounder, freer forms reminiscent of trees and roots. Som-Pimpong confirmed that reading. The pieces balance Scandinavian symmetry, clean lines, and lightness against the "liveliness" and energy of African artistry, expressed through organic shapes and curves. Som-Pimpong ties this balance to personality. The engineer loves symmetry, precision, and accuracy. The artist wants to "cast off constraints and just carve until I feel it."
From an Empty House to a Garage Workshop
The move into furniture began by accident. After buying a house in the Asheville area in 2015, Som-Pimpong still had a bachelor-apartment setup: an air bed and a single folding chair. The house had been furnished during showings, and he assumed the furniture came with it. When the door opened after closing, the house was empty. As he tells it, he didn't know staging was a thing.
Thrift stores didn't turn up pieces he liked, so he bought basic supplies and a few tools from Lowe's and tried building a pair of end tables. Several hours in, he was still going and realized how much he was enjoying it. Over the following weeks, months, and years, the garage filled with tools and equipment, and every free moment went to practicing and experimenting. His summary: it began out of necessity, grew into a passion, and then into a business.
The Engineering Mindset in Furniture Making
Som-Pimpong holds a mechanical engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon and stayed for a master's in civil and environmental engineering. The engineering path grew out of a childhood of Legos and tinkering with household items such as aluminum foil, string, gears, and small motors. Carnegie Mellon was a less obvious choice. Only one student from the high school had gone there over many years. Som-Pimpong heard that student talk about it, looked it up, and fell in love with the school and with Pittsburgh. The choice looked random, but he describes it as providential.
Most of the specific technical content of the degree doesn't come into play in furniture making. What carries over is a way of thinking: creating standards, being systematic, valuing precision, and putting processes and procedures in place. Som-Pimpong also describes an intuition developed through that education. He doesn't run load analyses on the furniture but can tell during design whether a piece will be structurally sound.
To that he adds resilience. Engineering school meant all-nighters and problems that seemed unsolvable until he slept on them or a friend offered a small tip. Furniture making works the same way. When he hits a challenge, he sleeps on it, talks to a colleague, or looks up information, and what seemed insurmountable becomes solvable. The host, also a mechanical engineer by training, observed that guests on the show often say the problem-solving mentality is what lasts from an engineering education.
Growing a Side Business Into Something More
Crafted Glory was not launched as a business meant to support a family from day one. Som-Pimpong describes "inching into it organically." Small-scale sales led to custom requests. Those inspired new work, which he showed publicly, which led to more requests. As this grew, he had to build infrastructure around it, starting with the legal steps of officially registering the business. Each step led to the next until he had "a full-fledged business."
When people call it a neat hobby, he corrects them. He describes it as effectively a full-time job, despite the corporate role. He wants Crafted Glory to last for the next decade, 50 years, and beyond. He wants it to become a legacy brand he can pass on to his son and something that benefits the surrounding community.
Two Views From How I Built This
The host mentioned Som-Pimpong's appearance on the advice line of How I Built This, Guy Raz's show. The host placed it in 2024, but Som-Pimpong said it had aired the previous year. The episode featured Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, whose company Som-Pimpong has long admired.
On the show, Som-Pimpong explained the juggling act and asked how to reach the point where Crafted Glory could be the only job. The two hosts had somewhat different views. Guy Raz, aware of the young family (a one-year-old and a recent marriage), felt Som-Pimpong should get as quickly as possible to a place where he wasn't stretched so thin. Scaringe argued that while Som-Pimpong is still young and has the energy, the corporate manufacturing career and Crafted Glory could keep supporting each other, so both should keep going.
Both agreed on the fundamentals. Som-Pimpong needs to put foundations in place that give Crafted Glory the bandwidth and runway to thrive, and for the business to become what he wants, it will eventually need full attention. They differed only on when that shift should happen.
Visiting Hellman-Chang: Part Numbers, Scanning, and Work Cells
Asked about scaling from craft to production, Som-Pimpong described a visit to the Georgia manufacturing facility of Hellman-Chang, a furniture brand he has long admired. It was founded by Dan Hellman and Eric Chang (Som-Pimpong wasn't fully sure of the latter's first name). Their story parallels his own. They started in a garage while holding full-time jobs, eventually went all in, and built the company first in Brooklyn, designing and making pieces themselves without formal training.
The connection came through a banker who had done financing work for the company. The banker emailed Som-Pimpong and offered an introduction, and Dan Hellman spent an afternoon walking him through the plant.
What stood out most was that every component of their furniture had a part number. Holding up a piece of wood, Som-Pimpong explained that even a single part like that would be numbered, and those parts cascade up into drawings loaded into a central program. Workers scan whatever they are working on into the system as it moves through production. The facility was organized into work cells where each operation happened in its proper place. 5S was practiced well, the plant was well organized, and it used a good deal of automation, including CNC machines. The whole thing reminded him of his corporate manufacturing background, and he believes this systematic approach was key to their move from craft to production.
Dan also described how the company started with everything done by hand, including shaping curves with spokeshaves. What interested Som-Pimpong most was that, despite today's structured operation, a handmade element remains, adapted to work within a manufacturing environment. That is the model he aspires to: preserve the craft, but systematize it so someone else can be trained to the documentation and do the work.
The host drew two lessons from the story. The first is the value of visiting companies a few steps ahead of where you are, which he said applies equally to furniture makers, job shops, and manufacturing technology companies. The second is that Som-Pimpong's approach adds systems and automation where they create efficiency without removing the "heart and soul" of the business. Som-Pimpong agreed.
What the Day Job at Eaton Teaches
At Eaton, Som-Pimpong supervises a team of 22 and has been a supervisor for about 12 years. He says he was not naturally a "manager of people" type. Holding people accountable and speaking to large groups made him uncomfortable. Today he feels comfortable with all of it, and he credits the role with stretching and growing him.
Crafted Glory currently has one employee, but he expects to build a larger team and believes he knows what it takes. His approach is to help employees feel empowered and own the process rather than to micromanage or command. Even though it is his company, he tries to invite the employee into ownership, and he finds more gets accomplished that way. He has done this with his one employee and expects it to scale.
Beyond leadership, he lists the industrial practices he has brought into the shop: systems, 5S, standard operations, method sheets, documenting his process, time studies, and kaizen-style small improvements. He calls these hugely instrumental to Crafted Glory's success so far and expects them to help take it to the next level.
Balancing a Family, a Factory Shift, and a Business
The host asked how Som-Pimpong balances all this, both across his life and within the business. Som-Pimpong acknowledged he has reached a point where he can't keep juggling everything the same way for much longer, and that some things will have to give. He considers that acceptable. He also cited the idea that constraints breed creativity.
The first thing he credits is his wife. She is supportive and entrepreneurial, wants Crafted Glory to become a legacy brand, and has her own projects. They support each other. She is flexible about the time he spends away, and they work through pricing, customer-relations challenges, and other problems together. He contrasts this with earlier years when he worked alone and made many mistakes because he had no one to talk things through with.
His time is tight. He has four to five hours a day for Crafted Glory, a 10-hour shift at Eaton, and he wants to give his son the time he needs. He described three specific strategies.
Strategy One: A Clipboard Instead of Software
In a corner of his shop hangs a clipboard with a sheet of paper where he records his time in, his time out, and notes on what happened that day. For a long time he had a mental block. He wanted to track his activities but thought he first needed the right software or app. Eventually he decided to just write it down.
He calls the result hugely impactful. He can now see where his time goes and how long a given piece actually took. That feeds directly into pricing, and he frames the chain this way: knowing the time lets him get the pricing right, and getting the pricing right moves him closer to not needing another job.
Strategy Two: Reflecting Out Loud With Claude
Som-Pimpong uses AI heavily for organization, specifically Claude. At the end of each studio session, during the 40-minute drive home, he dictates to Claude what happened: reflections, what he was thinking about, and the challenges he faced. He values how it draws connections. As he adds more information over time, it has more context about his whole journey and draws conclusions from that. He says it has helped shape his thinking about building the brand and business and has helped operationally in many ways, and he recommended it to listeners who haven't tried it.
Strategy Three: One Meeting, Six Potential Projects
The third strategy is networking, which he says has opened doors toward running his craft practice full-time. His example: while in New York for a conference, he reached out to a past client he had never met in person and asked to meet. At the client's house, the client suggested taking a picture with the table Som-Pimpong had built and posted it on Instagram.
Someone saw the post and inquired about a dining table, asking to work through their interior designer. Som-Pimpong connected with the designer and was about to start on that table. Then the designer asked him to quote five other projects. From one meeting that could easily not have happened, he now has a relationship with an interior designer that should produce ongoing work. His projection is that doing this four or five more times could be enough to fill his year, at which point Crafted Glory would really be "doing its thing."
The host summarized the three tips as a low-tech clipboard, an AI tool at the other end of the tech spectrum, and a concrete example of how networking compounds over time.
Echoes of the Forest: Furniture From Hurricane Helene's Fallen Trees
The final topic was Hurricane Helene and a project called Echoes of the Forest. Som-Pimpong described the hurricane as a horrible surprise that no one anticipated. People are calling it a 100-year flood, since the last flood of comparable significance in the area was in 1916, as he recalls. He said some areas flooded 10 or 20 feet higher than in 1916; he wasn't sure which figure was right. Among the damage, the storm uprooted thousands upon thousands of trees.
A local woman, Liisa Andreassen, was out walking one day and was inspired to do something with the fallen trees. She started Echoes of the Forest, which pairs woodworkers with trees downed by the storm to create works of art placed in key locations around the city. Som-Pimpong joined as one of the woodworkers and has two projects.
The first, installed just before the interview, is a surround mantel made from a walnut tree felled by Helene, placed in the Biltmore Forest Town Hall. Som-Pimpong explained the layered significance. Biltmore Forest was founded by George Vanderbilt's family and estate, and the community itself came about because of the 1916 flood. After that flood, the family sold off roughly 1,500 acres to create the community, which he believes was incorporated in 1923. More than a century later, another flood produced the wood for a piece now going into that same town hall. The mantel was to be unveiled the following Tuesday.
The second project is an outdoor bench for a historic part of downtown Asheville, placed outside the Young Men's Institute (YMI). That building also connects to the Vanderbilts, since it was built by the same artisans and craftsmen who built the Biltmore Estate. Som-Pimpong called it a full-circle moment.
Where Things Stand
Crafted Glory can be found at craftedglory.com and on Instagram, where Som-Pimpong says he is very active and takes custom commissions. The open question from the start of the conversation remains. Both of his How I Built This advisers agreed the business will eventually need his full attention, and Som-Pimpong admits the current juggling can't last much longer. What he is building now is meant to make that transition possible: time data for accurate pricing, documented processes that someone else could follow, a leadership approach meant to scale beyond one employee, and a pipeline of relationships.
I still maintain the craft element of what I'm doing, but it is systematized such that I can step away, bring someone in, train them to the documentation, and they can come in and do the same thing that I do and better.
How do you grow a manufacturing business that's rooted in craftsmanship? If you're Kwadwo Som-Pimpong, it doesn't hurt having an engineering background and a ton of industrial manufacturing experience. Kwadwo is the founder of Crafted Glory, a small-batch handmade furniture brand with a one-of-a-kind design philosophy. Not only is this one of the coolest manufacturing applications I've come across recently, but in today's interview, Kwadwo will share his story and tell us what it takes to scale a manufacturing business rooted in craftsmanship.
Kwadwo, welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour. You're a longtime listener of the show. You know how these interviews start. If we were having this conversation at a cafe over a beverage, where might that be? Describe the setting.
Chris, I'm really excited to be on the show. I've loved it and I'm excited to share my story. If we were to have this conversation in a cafe or a location, it would definitely be a place that is unique to where I live, which is Asheville, North Carolina. And there's a place I discovered early on called Biscuit Head. Biscuit Head. It's kind of a cafe, kind of a restaurant. They only do breakfast and lunch, but they have incredible drinks, coffee, teas, everything.
What really drew me is their biscuits. I love biscuits ever since I was a kid. They have these incredible biscuits. So, if I get a drink there, I'm going to get a biscuit. So, that's where I would be. Biscuit Head in Asheville, North Carolina.
You're not going to believe this, but I've been to Biscuit Head once.
Really?
That place is awesome. I'm from Missouri. Shout out to my uncle John. He got me introduced to biscuits and gravy at a relatively early age. And I'm a sucker for anywhere that does both the biscuits and the gravy really well. In fact, I'll send you a message after this interview. I have a sticker from Biscuit Head on my file cabinet. So, man, I know exactly where we're having this conversation and I'm all for it.
This is a great breakfast conversation then. Let's say you and I are hanging out having biscuits, drinking coffee over at Biscuit Head in Asheville. I'd love it if you can kick this off just describing it as if you're in that cafe setting. Tell us about the furniture you build and maybe a bit about the Ghanaian design philosophy which I believe you base it on.
Yeah, definitely. Crafted Glory is the name of my craft practice, making handcrafted furniture. I started making furniture in 2015, but I started selling furniture in 2017. And it's been an organic journey over these many years of learning the craft, learning what really inspires me, learning all the ins and outs, the business side of things, all of the hardships, all the highs and lows. And over time, I've developed my aesthetic.
Initially, I'd say that I started off really motivated and inspired by Scandinavian design, interestingly enough. Just because I suppose that's what I was seeing out there. The people I was learning from, that's the aesthetic that many people go for. And that's how I started my Etsy shop. That's how I started selling furniture, with Scandinavian-inspired furniture.
But over time I realized that something was missing, and that was my cultural heritage. My family is from Ghana. My wife is from Ghana. We got married recently, about three years ago. And in the process of connecting more deeply with my culture through marrying my wife, traveling to Ghana more often, I realized that this needs to come out in the work that I make. Why avoid it? Why not celebrate it and let people see what West African, what Ghanaian design is like? And so in recent years, that's the path that I've been taking my craft practice, is really integrating that into my work.
But I still love Scandinavian design. There's just something about it that many people will say really draws them to it, and it draws me to it. So, what's interesting is that I'm bringing those two worlds together in my furniture. And that results in a very unique aesthetic.
No kidding. My wife and I have a lot of mid-century modern furniture, either inspired by or old stuff that we found at old shops and things like that. And it's very much in that Scandinavian design. Tell me if I'm reading this correctly: when I've looked at your furniture, it has that smooth, somewhat symmetrical elements that are really characteristic, as I understand it, of Scandinavian design. But it also mixes in almost like the natural shape of a tree and roots as well. It's a little more rounded. It's a little more free-flowing. It's not that perfect symmetry that you often see with Scandinavian design. Am I getting the correct read on how you mix both of those types of designs together?
That is spot-on, and I'm really happy that someone who's new to seeing my craft spots it, because you nailed it. That's exactly it. It's just balancing the symmetry, the clean lines, the lightness of the look, balancing that with the liveliness of the Ghanaian, the African artistry. There's just an energy to it that I try to incorporate into it. And that's the organic shapes, the curves.
It really scratches an itch for me because my background is engineering. And I love the symmetry. I love the precision, the accuracy, all these things. But there's also the artist side of me that loves to just be free and cast off constraints and just carve until I feel it. And so bringing those two worlds together is really exciting.
Yeah. And Kwadwo, we'll get into your engineering background in a little bit, but you had mentioned, I believe, you started making furniture in 2015. Tell us the story about how you got into making furniture. I only have a handful of friends that have gotten into woodworking and building furniture, but when they get into it, man, they get into it. It often becomes a side business from what I've seen. So, tell us about that journey. What got you into it?
Well, I moved to the Asheville area a couple years before 2015, but I got my house in 2015 and I still was in the bachelor pad mindset: apartment, no furniture, air bed, one folding chair. That was the extent of my furniture collection. So when I got to the house and we were shopping around, I saw that it was furnished. I thought, "Okay, great. All this is going to be there and I don't have to worry about that." But when I opened the door after we had closed on the house, I saw that the house was completely empty and thinking, "Where is the furniture?" Not knowing that staging was a thing.
So that began my journey of trying to find furniture that I wanted and that really spoke to me. I decided to thrift for pieces and couldn't quite find the pieces that I liked. And so one day I decided to try my hand at making a couple end tables. So I collected some supplies from Lowe's, really basic things. I didn't really know what I was getting into, and a couple tools, and I started at it. And after several hours I was still going and just realized how much I was enjoying myself. So that's where I got bitten by the bug.
And over the course of weeks and months and eventually years, I built out my garage with tools and equipment. And any free moment that I had, I was practicing. I was learning, experimenting, and that's how it all began. It began out of necessity, but then grew into a passion and then grew into a business.
Yeah. I'm excited to explore the business in a little bit, but I mentioned we were going to talk about your engineering background. So, I imagine there's quite a different story as to how you got into mechanical as well as civil and environmental engineering. I believe you have a dual degree, and you did this at Carnegie Mellon. Tell us that story.
Yeah. I've always loved working with my hands ever since I was a kid. I would, of course, play with Legos. Many of us, that's our origin story. I collected so many Legos. I could spend the whole day building with Legos. And I also would collect various items to the house: aluminum foil, string, gears, little motors, and tinker. So when it came time to explore college and what I would study and where I would go, I reflected on my upbringing and realized in conversations with people that engineering would probably be the best way to go.
And to tell you the truth, how I landed on Carnegie Mellon was not really straightforward at all. I had never heard of the university. There was one person at my high school who went there, just one over the course of many years. No one had gone there except for this one person. And I heard him talking about it. I looked it up and for some reason I just fell in love with the school. I fell in love with Pittsburgh and that's where I really wanted to go. I believe it was really providential, but it seemed very random. And so that's where I went, studied mechanical engineering, and eventually also stayed for a master's in civil and environmental engineering. I love engineering. I love the precision. I love everything about it. So I think it was really the right thing for me.
How do you incorporate your engineering background into your craft, your woodworking, your furniture making at Crafted Glory?
Yeah. It doesn't come into play in all the ways that I could potentially apply my degree, and that's the case with many people. You end up only focusing on one narrow portion of it. But with furniture making, I'd say the main thing is the way of thinking, the engineering mindset, creating standards, being systematic, the precision, putting into place processes and procedures.
And then there's also just an intuition that I've developed through my education of just knowing when something's going to work. So, as I'm designing a piece, I can tell when it's going to be structurally sound. I'm not doing load analyses on my furniture, but there's just an intuition that has come about through that. So, it definitely comes into play. It really shaped the way that I think as I approach furniture making.
Yeah. And that's, I would say, a common sentiment regarding engineering on this show. Folks that might be doing something different, including myself, right? I have a mechanical engineering background from long ago, and it's the thought process, the mentality in terms of how we approach projects and problem solving, that often seems to be where it comes into play, even years later.
Yeah. I also add to that resilience and being able to stick with it. I just think back on those classes that required all-nighters, those projects that it seemed like, "I just can't find a solution to this problem." But you have to stick with it. And then you go to sleep that night, you wake up the next morning and it's like, "Oh, that's how I do it." Or you talk to a friend, they give you that little tip and, "Okay, that's how I solve it." Same way with the furniture making. I'll run into some challenges. I'll sleep on it. I'll go talk to a colleague. I look some information up and then what seemed like an insurmountable challenge all of a sudden becomes very much solvable.
Well, speaking of which, let's jump into building Crafted Glory on the side because I think maybe folks listening to the show realize this more than others, but society often thinks that, hey, when you're starting a business, you're taking a leap of faith, something you're starting on day one after you quit a full-time job. But in reality, myself included, a lot of folks like yourself start it as a side hustle. So, what was it like building Crafted Glory? You mentioned you were doing furniture making for roughly two years before you started selling it. You got your end tables in place and things like that. What was it like building Crafted Glory as a side hustle?
Well, just like you said, it wasn't right off the bat, "This is going to be a business that's going to sustain me and the family." It was just inching into it organically. When I started selling pieces, it was just very small scale. But as I started putting my work out there, people would request custom work and that would inspire new work, and then I'll show that work and other people would request that or other pieces based on that. And it's just a natural progression.
And with that, as I began to put my work out there and sell pieces, then I needed to build the infrastructure around that so that it can actually be a business. So, of course, the legal stuff, setting it up officially, registering business, all those things. And it seems just that once you do one thing, it leads to another, which leads to another, and before you know it, you have a full-fledged business.
As I go along and I tell people about what I do, they'll often say, "Oh, that's neat. That's a neat hobby," or, "That's a neat little thing you got there." And I just tell them, "No, no, no, no. This is not a hobby. This is a full-fledged, really a full-time job at this point." Even though, as we'll probably get into later, I still work a corporate job, I'm very serious and intentional about Crafted Glory enduring for the next decade, 50 years and beyond, and being something that is a legacy brand that I can pass on to my son, that benefits the community and society around me. So, very much not a hobby. It is something that I really want to be long-lasting.
Yeah. And from my research, you've been putting in the steps and the work to build that legacy business for a long time. And I actually have some questions around some of those tidbits, those little stories that I've come across. As I understand it, you were on the How I Built This Advice Line back in 2024, so a couple years ago. How I Built This, I imagine a lot of folks listening to this show are familiar with the show that Guy Raz runs, which is in many ways similar to this, right? He's talking to entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses and the stories behind it. But you were talking to RJ—how do you say his name? Scaringe.
Scaringe. You got it.
Yeah. You were chatting with RJ Scaringe. What advice did he give you? Because this would have been, you'd been in the thick of your business for a while. What advice were you looking for and what did he share?
Yeah. Actually the show was last year, and it was incredible. I couldn't believe that I got the opportunity to be on it. And of course, RJ Scaringe is the CEO of Rivian, which is a brand that I've admired for a long time. So, when they told me that he would be the person on the show, I was so just beyond myself. So on the show, I got to ask questions and get advice from both RJ and Guy.
And I just explained how right now I'm juggling two worlds, with the desire for Crafted Glory to be the only thing that I do. And I wanted to get advice from them on how I can get to the point where I can make that transition. So they gave some great advice, good feedback. Interestingly, they had slightly different viewpoints.
Guy, knowing that I have a young family—I have a one-year-old and my wife, we got married just a couple years ago—he really felt that you need to quickly, as soon as possible, get to a place where you're not doing so much and stretching yourself thin. RJ really felt like, well, you're still young, you have the energy, while you have
Your manufacturing career at a corporate job going and supporting you in various ways, continue to build Crafted Glory and let them both work for you. So it's interesting hearing both viewpoints, but generally they both agreed that I need to put the foundations in place that will allow Crafted Glory to thrive and exist and have bandwidth, or have runway, so that I can eventually do it full-time. They both agreed that in order for it to really grow and really become what I desire it to be, that it needs my full attention. Just different views on when that should happen. So it was very helpful. Very good. I love that show.
Well, it's cool that you're able to get two slightly different pieces of advice with some common core aspects to them, right, from two different individuals. Also, shame on me for forgetting that R.J. was the guy behind Rivian. Thank you for reminding me of that.
He should be on your show, by the way.
I should make that. I am actually clearing up some bandwidth right now to get larger guests. So I wouldn't be surprised if we get someone like R.J. on the show at some point. So you just watch. I'm going to put in, just like you're putting in the effort to build a legacy business, I'm going to need to put in some of those steps to make sure I continue the Manufacturing Happy Hour legacy with guys like R.J.
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I don't want to take the focus off of you for too long here. I think the fact that Guy and R.J. were giving you advice on, hey, you need to figure out how you can build that infrastructure, make it a sustainable business. My next question is actually about an instance where it sounds like you were doing that. You recently visited Hellman-Chang's Georgia manufacturing facility. And if you could tell us who Hellman-Chang is for the audience in case someone's not familiar, but what did you learn from that visit specifically around scaling from craft to production? Because this is where I think we're going to be going with the conversation next, because especially as a lot of folks listening to this are industrial manufacturers, right? This is where I think people can pull a lot of great lessons from you on just what you're doing to scale right now.
Yeah. That was an incredible trip. Again, just couldn't believe that I had the opportunity. I've admired that company for quite a while. It's also a fine furniture brand founded by two guys, Dan Hellman and Eric Chang, I believe it's Eric. Yeah. So they founded it. Similar story to mine where it was a garage operation. They had their full-time jobs. They were building this on the side. And then eventually they decided to go all in and built it over time, initially in Brooklyn, New York, designing the pieces, making them themselves. They learned along the way. They didn't have formal training. So a lot of parallels to my story. And so when I heard their story, I just resonated with it.
And one day I actually got an email from somebody who had, I think, they had done some financing for them at some point in time, a banker, and she said she could connect us. So she connected me with them, and one thing led to another. They welcomed me into their manufacturing plant in Georgia. I got to spend the whole afternoon with Dan, actually, and got to see everything. He talked through their processes. It was absolutely incredible.
And what I learned there, the main thing that stood out to me was how every component of their furniture pieces had a part number. They had made everything into components. Even, got this piece of wood here. Let's say that this was a part of a piece of furniture. It had a part number, and they had that cascaded into, or cascaded up into, drawings that were loaded into a central program. And so their workers could scan along the way. They would scan whatever they're working on into the system, and it's just a great flow. It just reminded me very much of my manufacturing background in my corporate career. Everything was very systematic, and I believe that was key to helping them to scale their operation from craft to production.
They had their work cells, various work cells, and everything happened in its appropriate place. Great flow, and it was very well thought out. They were doing 5S very well. Very well organized facility, lots of automation, CNCs. Everything was just well done. And they talked me through, or Dan talked me through, how initially everything was by hand. They'd use spokeshaves to shape their curves, and everything was just by hand.
But what was interesting to me was that even though now their operation is very structured in that way, there still is a handmade element to what they're still doing, but it's just catered nicely for the manufacturing environment, if that makes sense. So I loved that about it, and that's something that I aspire to have in my operation, where I still maintain the craft element of what I'm doing, but it is systematized such that I can step away, bring someone in, train them to the documentation, and they can come in and do the same thing that I do and better.
Yeah, you're definitely answering that with the mindset of an industrial engineer, for sure. A couple lessons that I pulled out of that. One is a very basic lesson, I should say, but one that I don't think manufacturers often appreciate enough. You went and visited a facility that was a few years ahead of where you are, right? And you wanted to look at them and say, "Hey, this is where I want to get my business to someday." It's important to look at the mentors, the similar companies out there that maybe your business is at level A today and you want to get it to level B. Well, hey, go meet and talk to the folks that are already doing their business at level B. And that's whether you're a furniture manufacturer, that's whether you're a job shop, that's whether you're a manufacturing technology company. Applies across the board. So that's an excellent lesson right there.
And then the way you're discussing, hey, I want to build in systems. I want to automate where it makes sense, but you're not removing the craft from the business. You're adding it to the areas where, yeah, we can build in some efficiencies that would allow us to scale here, but we're not going to take away the heart and soul of the business.
That's it. Exactly. Exactly.
Another question I have is about your experience at Eaton, right? You're a fabrication supervisor at Eaton, which leads me to believe that there's some lessons you've pulled from your job at Eaton as well. How has that helped you so far in building Crafted Glory?
Absolutely. It really comes into play in so many ways. First of all, the leadership aspect. So I have a team of 22 people that I supervise. Being a supervisor, which I've done for, it's about 12 years now, has stretched me in so many ways. I was not a manager-of-people kind of person initially. That would make me very uncomfortable, having to hold people accountable and talk in front of large groups and all that's required with managing a team. But today I feel very comfortable with all those aspects, and it has stretched me and grown me such that today I can lead a team in my own operation, even though right now I don't have a large team. Actually, I have one employee, but I do look forward to building a larger team.
And so I know what it takes to motivate employees. I know how to help them feel empowered rather than just micromanaging and commanding them and that kind of approach. I know how to help them feel empowered and own the process. Even though this is my company, I know how to invite them into ownership, and I find that when that happens, we can achieve so much more. So I've been able to do that with this one employee, and I can scale that to more employees.
Other aspects that have translated into my craft are just the industrial manufacturing aspects, the systems, the 5S, standard operations, having method sheets, documenting my process, time studies. All of these things come into play. And Kaizen, just making improvements on small scales. All of these things have been hugely instrumental in the success of Crafted Glory, and I anticipate it helping me to take Crafted Glory to the next level.
Yeah. Absolutely. A lot of one-to-one examples of things that would transfer to your growing business that you learn from your day job at the end of the day. And I think more people need to appreciate all the things they can pull from their corporate job to what they might do someday as an entrepreneur. So I appreciate you pulling the curtain back on that.
I have a big question as we get into the final parts of our conversation. How are you balancing all of these aspects of growing a business? I was originally just going to ask it about balancing all the aspects of growing a business, but not only that, you're growing a business. You already have one employee. You're talking about scaling and constraints, right? But you also have other constraints in your life, right? You've got a family, you've got a day job. I don't want to call them all constraints, right? But you're balancing a lot. How are you doing it, and how are you thinking about all of that? It's kind of a two-part question, right? How are you balancing life, but also how are you balancing these within the business that you're building at Crafted Glory?
Yeah, that is a really powerful question because it opens up a lot of conversation points that have been top of mind for me for really several years now. I've definitely gotten to a point where I can't continue much longer juggling everything in the same way, and something or some things have to give, which is good, which is okay. And the constraints have caused me to be creative in many ways. The saying that constraints breed creativity. That's very true in the things that I do.
So juggling all of them, first of all, it helps that my wife is incredibly supportive. She's also entrepreneurial. She wants to see Crafted Glory become a legacy brand, and she has things that she's working on herself, and we support each other. She's flexible with the time constraints, my being away a lot as I work on these things. And we put our heads together and we solve problems together. We talk through challenges. We talked through pricing. We talked through customer relation challenges. All of these things, and it helps so much. I remember being alone and making so many mistakes just because there's no one to talk through challenges with.
But today I have to be really strategic with my time. My time is really valuable. I only have four to five hours of time in Crafted Glory each day. And then I'm at Eaton for a 10-hour shift. And so there's not much time for much else. And of course my son, it's very important for me to give him the time that he needs as well.
So a few strategies I've put in place are, right now I'm looking over at the corner of my shop where I have a clipboard. And what I've done is I put just a piece of paper, and I write my in, my out, and notes of what happened during that day. That might seem really basic, but for some reason I had this mental block where I wanted to do something to capture my activities, but I just thought I need to find the right software, the right app. And what I decided, let me just get a piece of paper and write it down. And that's been so hugely impactful because now I see, oh, this is where I'm spending my time. This is how long this piece took me. If I know the time, then that translates into my pricing. If I get my pricing right, then that moves me closer to being free from working another job. Capturing that data is so powerful. That's one thing.
Also, I use AI a lot, actually, in helping with organization, and Claude specifically. So what I do at the end of the day, I get into my car, and on my way back, because I have a 40-minute drive, I will dictate to Claude what happened during my time in the studio. I'll talk about reflections, things I was thinking about, challenges I faced. And I just love how Claude draws connections. As you put more information in, you're giving it more context, and it will draw conclusions based on your whole story, your journey. I highly recommend it for those who have not explored it. But that's been helping to shape my thinking about several different aspects of building my brand and my business. It's helped operationally, many ways.
And then the third thing I'll mention is that networking has been very powerful in my journey of balancing everything and eventually moving towards just running my craft practice, because it's been opening up doors that are moving me in that direction.
For example, I was in New York recently for a conference, and while I was there, I reached out to a past client saying, "Hey, can we meet up?" Never got to meet before. And so he said, "Yeah." So I went to his house. We sat and talked. One thing led to another. He grabbed me and said, "Hey, let's take a picture of the table you built for me." Took a picture. He posted on his Instagram. Someone reached out and inquired about the dining table. They said, "Hey, but how about you work through my interior designer?" Got connected to his interior designer, about to start making this table for him, but they said, "Hey, by the way, we have these five other projects that we'd like you to quote for us."
So just by that one meeting, which could have just easily not happened, I have this new relationship with an interior designer from which projects will come. So imagine if I do that four or five other times, that could be all I need to fill out my year, and then Crafted Glory is really doing its thing. So those are some of the ways that I'm managing the different things that I have to juggle.
Hey, I love all the three very specific pieces of advice you gave there. I should say that that's how I'm going to summarize it. The first thing, you talked about the clipboard, right? Sometimes you don't need the biggest tech to do something, right? Write the in and out, what got accomplished during that time. I love that strategy, especially as a fellow business owner that sometimes does not manage my time as effectively as I would like. Great tip for that. On the other end of the spectrum, you're leveraging Claude, you're leveraging artificial intelligence in your business as well. Great example in that regard. And then finally, a very concrete story on the power of networking and how that just amplifies over time.
So, Kwadwo, I really appreciate everything you've been taking us through today. My last big question is around your Echoes of the Forest project. Because folks listening, you mentioned you're from the Asheville area. It's no secret that you just got hit with a major hurricane not too long ago with impacts that most people, I don't think, could ever even imagine having on an inland area like Asheville. Can you tell us more about the Echoes of the Forest project and how the hurricane caused you to kind of rethink a lot of things you're doing in your business?
Yeah. Well, Hurricane Helene was such a horrible surprise, really, in many ways. No one could have anticipated it. It was what people are calling a hundred-year flood because the last time this area had a flood of that significance was in 1916, I believe. And this flooding from Hurricane Helene surpassed that by, if I remember correctly, there are some areas that flooded 20 feet higher, or it's either 10 or 20 feet higher than it was during that flood of 1916. So Hurricane Helene...
Caused a lot of damage, including uprooting thousands and thousands and thousands of trees.
There was someone who was walking along one day. Her name is Liisa Andreassen. She was inspired to do something about all these trees that had fallen. And so she decided to start this organization called Echoes of the Forest, where she will take woodworkers and pair them up with these trees that had fallen and have them make works of art that will then get placed in key areas around the city. So I got connected with her. I became one of the woodworkers, and I currently have two projects.
Actually, before our interview, I just installed one of them. This one is a mantel, a surround mantel made from a walnut tree that fell during Hurricane Helene. Now, what's significant about this? There's actually many levels of significance. This mantel was installed in the Biltmore Forest Town Hall. Biltmore Forest was founded by the family of George Vanderbilt, by his estate. And actually, that community, Biltmore Forest, came about because of the flood of 1916. When that happened, the family decided to sell off about 1,500 acres of land to start this community, which was incorporated in 1923, I believe. All because it wasn't kicked off by that flood. Interestingly enough, over a hundred years later, Hurricane Helene caused the flooding, and now I'm making this project as a response to that, which is going in Biltmore Forest. So that's going to be unveiled on Tuesday.
The other project is I'm making a bench, an outdoor bench that's going in a historic region of downtown Asheville, which is also connected to the Vanderbilt family. The Young Men's Institute, the YMI, was built by the same artisans and craftsmen who built the Biltmore Estate. And so the bench that I'm making is going to sit right outside of the YMI. So just an interesting full circle moment there.
Yeah. And I love the community connection. This has been a full circle manufacturing story. You're covering all the topics that we cover on Manufacturing Happy Hour in a single 40-minute episode. From the leadership aspects, from what you've learned from your day job, what you've learned from starting your own business, to the community impact of manufacturing. It has been very cool hearing your story here today, Kwadwo.
And I have to ask, I know our audience is probably itching for this, and hopefully, I'm sure I'll have included it in the intro as well. Where can folks find you? Is there a social media spot? Obviously you'll have a website. Where are the best places to find Crafted Glory and maybe purchase your furniture as well?
Yeah. Well, people can find me either on my website, craftedglory.com, or on Instagram. I'm very active there, @craftedglory. And you can see what I'm working on. Reach out, connect with me. I take custom commissions. I'm glad to talk more about what we've talked about today. Yeah, I'd love to connect with people.
Absolutely. Well, I'm gonna hold myself accountable as well because we're doing some work around our house right now. But given that I've already got some Scandinavian furniture in here, I think I'm going to need to reach out soon and get, once I know if we need a chair, bar, stools, couch, whatever it is, right? I'll be back in touch because it would be great to have your work to complement our home as well. Seriously, you're doing some really cool things, and you have a story that's just as cool as well. Thank you so much for sharing it here on Manufacturing Happy Hour today.
Thank you so much, Chris. Love what you're doing.
Cheers.
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