How A New House Started A New Business For This Saint John Furniture Maker
SAINT JOHN – When John Moore first moved with his family into their new house back in 2012, he didn’t know that it would lead to the start of a new business.
Moore is the owner of Timber & Steel Furniture Outfitters, a company that sources local wood and steel to hand-build furniture for both residential and commercial clients.
The business started with Moore’s desire to build the furniture for his family’s new home in East Saint John. After looking at the retail options on the market, he thought he’d build it himself instead.
“After we bought our house, we needed furniture. I always been into woodworking and building stuff over the years, places I’ve worked for in the past,” says Moore. “We were out looking at box-store stuff, and I thought, ‘I’m sure I can make that.’ So I borrowed some tools and started making it.”
He posted his finished creations on Facebook. That’s when the requests started coming in. They became so steady that about three years ago Moore quit his job in auto body work to pursue the business full-time.
“People started messaging me asking, ‘how much to build this?’ Because there are a lot of people on Facebook that do build stuff like this,” says Moore. “We created a page and it just took off from there.”
But what makes Moore different from other “people on Facebook” selling custom furniture is that all his materials are New Brunswick sourced. He sources his lumber from Woodstock-based Maritime Lumber and his steel from Maritime Industrial Machining in Saint John. He also buys his wood epoxy through the Saint John Tool Library. He builds all of his commissions out of his small workshop on his property.
“We building everything from cutting-boards to complete kitchens and everything in between,” says Moore. “To differentiate us from a lot of other people on Facebook, for instance, we use a premium hardwood product. We also do all sorts of steel fabrication pieces. People will bring a drawing that they sketched up and we can refine it and move it around and we can build a steel base for a table or a store display, stuff like that.”
Right now, about 70 per cent of Timber & Steel’s business is residential and 30 per cent commercial. Commercial clients have included schools, small local business and bigger clients like Bayview Trucks. Moore also helped make some tables for the new cafe in Irving Oil headquarters.
He says he’s also gotten business beyond the Greater Saint John area, including in Shediac, Memramcook and Halifax. A lot of his commercial work comes from recommendations and connections he got through his residential work.
Though he has projects booked six to eight months out, Moore says it will be a while before he decides to take the leap and move Timber & Steel into a bigger workshop and hiring on staff, but it’s not a possibility he’s ruling out.
“It’s baby steps in a sense … because it’s a big investment when you get into renting a large shop,” he says.
But in the near future, Moore would like to grow his commercial client base.
“I plan on continuing on with it and focus on the commercial side I think now. I like doing the residential stuff, but it’s the same thing over and over,” he says. “But with commercial, it gives you a bit more creative freedom to do what you want and it’s fun doing stuff like that.”
One of his most recent projects was timber installation for the waiting area for the front lobby of Loch Lomond School, featuring giant building blocks, seating, cubby holes, and a colouring table.
“[The lobby] was pretty sterile. It was the same as it was when I was there in the 1980s, there wasn’t any change. There was no seating for anybody when they came in if they were waiting to see the teachers,” says Moore.
“It changed four or five times in the process to make everything work. But in the end, it came together really cute. My whole focus on it was creating a place where kids could immerse themselves in it and get away from the bullying and little things that they go through.”
It’s those kinds of projects Moore loves and wants to do more of. The ones that involve reimagining a space and working, then reworking, to make it something people will enjoy.
“I like challenge stuff. It’s frustrating sometimes to get it to work the way you want it to,” he says. “But doing projects like the school, there’s something more to it than getting paid for that job. Stuff like that is what I really like to do. The creative jobs are the fun ones.”