Interview– John Geating
“I think the only rule is to be patient. I try to remind myself of that as much as possible because I’m home with my kid and have limited time. I’m always trying to rush and work as fast as possible—and there’s merit to that. But for something to turn out well, you have to be patient, stay focused, and let it take the time it needs.
You notice the difference immediately when you make a huge mistake because you’re rushing. You have to go back and redo everything. Patience always, always makes something come out better—and, in the end, it ends up going faster.”
Could you give us a quick introduction for yourself? I’m John Geating. My wife Gina and I run a furniture company, and we started it about two years ago, right after our daughter was born. I've worked in the industry—mostly furniture and cabinetry—for close to 10 years now for three or four other shops. I just love building things, mostly out of wood, so this has been basically an excuse to do that for a long time. Over the years, I've learned from so many different woodworkers and people I’ve worked with, but once we had our daughter, I felt that it was the time to try and do it ourselves. There were ways I wanted to work that I wasn't able to do with other people, because we each have our own styles of working. There were things I wanted to try and build that either I didn't have the time to do on the side or they were bigger projects that you can't just do for yourself—you need to have a company so that other people will pay you to build for them.”
How did you start your career as a millworker? I didn't really plan on going into this industry. I didn't go to school for it. I had a slight interest in it, and I just got a job at a shop, and I just haven't done anything [else], so it wasn't part of my dreams growing up.
I decided I wanted to try it when I was working in New Zealand after college at a study abroad school where I was the property manager/TA is very small—20 students—and while I was there I became really good friends with a sheep farmer in a town, as you do in New Zealand. He was an old guy, you know, who does everything himself. He had a little woodshop, and we would make little random things. He taught me how to weld on the back of his truck in the middle of the woods. I started to appreciate making and building things in that way. When I came back, I decided to try out a shop. I got a minimum-wage job at this cabinet shop, and the foreman there is still one of my favorite people ever. He got me to really fall in love with the whole idea of woodworking.
What does “good design” mean to you? For me, it's function before form, for sure. Gina weighs more on the form side, because she feels that if something is in a home, it needs to have a certain feel, and it's going to change the feeling of a home, regardless of how it looks or how functional it is. The way it looks is going to have an effect, too. It's been really cool to design together and balance those two things. I think good design is something that is pleasing to use in a certain way but also pleasing to look at.
If you had a client who would fund your passion project, what would you want to build? Gina sent me to this class, my first woodworking class ever. It was just a week-long class on building these old chairs, and now I really want to build a set of ladder-back chairs. The chair was originally designed by Jennie Alexander, but she came up with a book called Make a Chair from a Tree. We started the first day, we had a log of oak, and we split it all up and spokeshaved it. I would love to build a set of chairs, taking that design and doing our own riff on it, just because they're super satisfying techniques that utilize the strength of wood but also take advantage of the weakness of the wood. They’re the kind of chairs that will be around for hundreds of years because of the way they’re built.
Who was your most memorable mentor / mentee? Why? I think mentor-wise I'd have to go with this guy Mike, who is the foreman at the first cabinet shop I worked at. He taught me most of what I know now, just because it was the first shop [I worked for], so I didn't really know anything. And he could tell that I really enjoyed it. When I was working for him, he was already old and a little bit jaded. He had his own shop for 15 years and got basically completely ripped off by this huge project, went bankrupt, and had to shut down. He ended up working for this other guy, so he was in a sad place. I started working at the same place maybe eight months after he had lost his whole company. I came on like a young yuppie dude who absolutely loved everything, was willing to do anything. He took me under his wing and gave me some really nice little hand tools and things that I still cherish to this day. He would take the time to show up and, even when it wasn't his job, show me how to do something.
Any memorable stories from your experience? Working for other shops, probably. They're the worst, but they're also the most memorable when you work on a project late at night—it's taking forever and you work 60- or 70-hour weeks doing something and have a couple of guys you're working with, are just at a certain point, you just accept what you have to do. You're there, 10:30, 11 o'clock at night, still at the shop working away. And you're just at that point—it's just jokes, and it just becomes fun. There's a camaraderie to do it. The first shop I worked at, the boss was always pushing us to do more and faster, and it was obviously very frustrating at times.
Do you have a set of rules you make yourself in order to excel in your job? I think the only rule is to be patient. I think I try and tell myself that as much as possible, because I'm with my kid at home and I’ve got limited time. I'm always trying to rush and work as fast as possible, and there's merit to that. But I think for something that turns out well, you have to be patient and focus and let it take the time that it's going to take.
You see a difference immediately when you make a huge mistake because you're rushing. You have to go back and do it all over again. The patience always, always makes something come out better and it ends up going faster.
What part of your job do you like / dislike? Why? I love building things in our shop. I think the aspect of owning our own shop and always doing a little fine-tuning to make it more efficient and more accurate is something I really enjoy. I think that aspect makes anything we build more fun because it's more streamlined. That's partly why I wanted to start my own [shop] because I could tune up a machine and know that it's going to be running perfectly every time because I'm the one that's using it.
I think the parts that I dislike would probably be finishing. If you ask any woodworker, it's probably the hardest part. I've had the biggest struggles, messing up finishes and having to strip a piece of furniture that you just built and redo it because it didn't come out. It happens all the time, and that's just a part of learning. There are so many different finishes to use and [you have to figure] out what works best on what type of wood.
What are some of your go-to references in regards to your job - website / books? I have a lot, but lately I discovered James Krenov books. I knew he was a legendary woodworker. The first one is called The Impractical Cabinetmaker, and it's about him and his views on woodworking as a lifestyle. He's an incredible woodworker and has a school out on the West Coast. The way he writes speaks to people like us that want to really build things and really enjoy it as a lifestyle. He talks about the practical things, like how to charge and the struggles of that. So he's probably one of the most inspiring.
And then the joy of certain tasks in the shop, right? All the little things that I really love about it. He's been super inspiring, his work. I’m not, like, a huge fan of his designs, but the execution of them is beautiful, and I love looking at them regardless. I love a lot of the stuff, but it is not exactly my style, but that's fine. He’s probably one of the most inspiring. Obviously there's gonna be some disconnect. But the first one, The Impractical Cabinetmaker, is loosely about woodworking. It's more about the world and how it's evolving and changing toward mass market. There are so many good little snippets in the stories in that book that apply to just general life. That is really cool.
Who are your favorable suppliers that you like or would like to work with? We have one sawmill that we work with who is one Mennonite guy out near Lancaster, and he gets all of his material from salvaged tree companies. They would normally throw it out, cut it up for firewood, or burn it, so he has a deal with them and he gets it for cheap or free. Then he mills it himself and dries it all out and then sells these giant slabs of wood. I really enjoyed working with him because it's close by and it's all stuff that was going to be trashed. And it's usually really unique trees because they've grown in weird places. There's always really interesting grain patterns and interesting trees.
Which client’s would you prefer to work with? Which type of job would you take without hesitation? People who see our website or Instagram and like the vibe or this style of things that we've built, and they come to us and say, “Hey, I want this type of furniture. Could you build me something like that?” And sometimes we get people who are like, “I really like what you guys do, and I trust you guys. So just do something that makes you excited, and I'm sure I'll love it.” That's without a doubt the best client. This happened a couple times, and obviously it's crazy, because we're such a young company. But there are people in our neighborhood, even, that we kind of know, or they know people that know us and so there's a connection, and then they see our work and they really like it. Some people like our stuff but still have their own idea of a design that they want, and they want us to build it. Some people question every little detail. I usually have an explanation for every decision I make in terms of designing a piece, and so it's a lot better when they can just trust me and I don't have to explain every decision.
What are some of the things that debunked your thoughts on the industry that took you a while to realize? How much stuff costs. When I was working for other people, I was always offended at how much they charged. I was like, “Are you kidding me? You're charging that much for this?” And I always thought they were schmucks. But now I'm right there with them charging [similar amounts]. It's hard to accept, but you also just have to accept it.
It takes a lot of time to make things. I feel the need to say that to people because sometimes I give people prices for things and it feels crazy, like they could never afford this, but when I really run the numbers, it's going to take this long and it's going to cost us much more in materials and I have to charge this much, and you just don't hear back from them at all. And I want to say it takes a lot of time to make these things, a lot of work. There's just a lot going on. There's so much overhead to run a shop like this, to own it and to have all these machines.
And I think the biggest challenges are underbidding jobs. Just understanding how to charge what things cost, figuring out how to accept that you underbid it and you’ve just got to finish it and move on to the next thing. It's really hard with custom projects because I've never built this specific type of thing before. I try to break it down in terms of all the different processes that it will take to build this thing. I usually estimate how long it will take and add some extra hours for unforeseen things. I include the material cost and I have a general shop cost, like overhead, that I add on top of that, and I look at that number and decide if it's a crazy number or if I need to add more to it because there are probably more unforeseen things that might happen. It's been a learning experience, but it's all been fine.
I remember one of my furniture professors, he said that on the jobs that he absolutely does not want to work on, he's just like, “That's called the ‘fuck-off price.’” I feel bad doing that. Oftentimes, I will refer them to someone else who I think might be more into building something like that, instead of giving them a crazy price, because I don't want to be that person that's like “$10,000 for a school!” you know? It ultimately helps. I know enough shops around, they know what people like to do and what they're good at, and so it's pretty easy to think of someone else that'll do it or want to do it and appreciate the work.
What are the things that you are hoping to do differently? It was more about the process. I'm really happy to build anything to a certain extent, but it was the way that it's built. I like to work a certain way, and it's hard to do that when you work for someone else, because you have to go with their way. Gina and I are trying to find ways to build things with integrity but also do them in an affordable way, to make it something even we could afford, because at this point, everything we build we can't afford ourselves. We build things for our clients that are way out of our price range. We're slowly trying to figure it out, and I think that comes down to us designing things ourselves, knowing our strengths and our weaknesses and designing around them to be able to make something that's well made but also cost effective.
Do you have a question that you would like to ask someone who is involved in another field? I want to find more sustainable building products. There's just so much when you go on the internet, it's overwhelming to know what it is and how you can use it and where I can even go to look at it and see what it's like and test it out. So it'd be cool to ask around, “Have you used anything that is eco-friendly?” Thus far, most of the shops I've worked at just use whatever the client asked for whenever it's the cheapest material because it is more affordable, but a lot of times that comes with not-so-eco friendly things. I'm realizing how much waste I create in a shop like this, just offcuts I can't really use. I don't have the time to make, like, spoons out of all these random little things. If at least the material I was using wasn't just going to fill and fill, I could burn it or I could compost or something. It'd be cool to get to a more neutral place.
