Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Cox.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Bricker & Beam started out, as many other small businesses, in a single-car garage in the heart of the city. I was fresh out of college at the time, newly married, and looking for what the next season of life held. As a full-time bartender, I always ended up with odd hours and often had most of my days open for other things – a schedule which reignited my childhood interest in woodworking.
Growing up, I spent most of my summers in Ohio on my Grandparent’s farm. My grandfather, son of a master carpenter, taught me about woodworking and planted a seed of curiosity that grew into a passion for creating. We made picture frames, and signs, and even small wooden boats for my army men to float down the stream that flowed through his property. It was a season of life that I’ll never forget, and one which inspired me to start Bricker & Beam.
Years later in 2012, I began making furniture for family and friends. I quickly became busier in the woodshop than I could handle while maintaining my other job, and so I took the leap to officially start a furniture company. It was a thrilling and terrifying decision, but one that has turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Shortly after launching the new brand, I knew I needed a few original, signature pieces that we could use to establish ourselves in the industry and carve out a stylistic identity. In quick succession, we launched our Evans Coffee Table – the first piece I designed completely from scratch, and still one of my favorite pieces we offer – as well as our Braxton Coffee Table which had a similar design aesthetic. We were fortunate in that each of these pieces were very well received, allowing me to expand the shop and work on additional designs.
As brand awareness continued to grow, so did our arsenal of original designs. Our DRIFT Coffee Table, Monroe Credenza, Ballantyne Table, Mobley Console, and others all followed the original successes and allowed me to expand the shop and hire the most talented woodworkers I could find. Today we have a small team of amazing people that work tirelessly to make the most beautiful furniture possible, and I still have to pinch myself sometimes when thinking of how much we’ve been blessed.
What started as a small, one-man, garage woodshop has flourished into an amazing small business that employs fantastic people and ships custom furniture all over the United States and Canada, and even to places like Australia, and the Bahamas.
We genuinely love making furniture and working with our fantastic clients. We see it as our avenue to create beauty, spread positivity and offer people something that they can be proud to display in their homes.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Although we’ve been incredibly lucky, it has by no means been a smooth road.
When I started the company, I was literally learning most everything from scratch. I knew woodworking to a degree but was now responsible for learning all the other elements to running a business at the same time. Those early days of wearing every hat in the business made for long days and nights, but it was also really fun and allowed for growth – both personally and professionally.
A few years later, as the business continued to grow, we moved to what is now our current shop. About 6 months in we had a catastrophic roof leak that spanned most of the shop, ruining over $50,000 worth of tools, equipment, and unique wood slabs and lumber. We were unable to work for over a month as everything dried out, the roof was fixed, and we assessed the damage. It was a really rough time altogether, but especially because there wasn’t anything we could actively do to resolve the issue – it was a waiting game. Not only that, but there was the added element of not knowing what all was lost, what could be salvaged, and when we could get back to work.
I feel a little silly claiming that as a “struggle” as many have gone through much worse, but it certainly was one of the more challenging times we’ve been through since we started.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We like to tell people that we specialize in heirloom-quality furniture that contemporary clean lines with the beauty of organic materials.
With more and more options for mass-produced, robot-made furniture out there, we believe in offering an alternative to those who want furniture with a soul.
All our pieces are handmade to order without the use of programmable CNCs, laser cutters, or other automated equipment – just our hands and the traditional tools.
We also like that our pieces have little details and evidences of being handmade. While most furniture stores emphasize uniformity, we aim to have each piece come out just slightly different than the one before it. Each piece is well built and beautifully made, of course, but on our Mobley Console for example, each door is lovingly hand-carved so that no two pieces are ever the same. This is by design and offers our clients something that mass production facilities cannot.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs, or other resources you think our readers should check out?
In many ways, we’re old school, but do integrate a few key resources that help streamline our processes. For project management, and to keep the whole team on the same page, we use Trello to keep track of all orders and detail changes.
Aside from that, most additional resources vary based on the task at hand. Other than apps like Audible and Spotify for obvious shop listening, nothing else stands out specifically.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@brickerandbeam.com
- Website: www.brickerandbeam.com
- Instagram: @brickerandbeam
- Twitter: @brickerandbeam
