Reply by Loren

It depends on how good you really are and whether
you have the equipment to satisfy them and make
money for yourself on the jobs, but direct marketing
to interior designers and architects can give you
access to the well-to-do clients who can afford
custom furniture and are emotionally willing to
invest in custom pieces.

If you can operate at lower margins, ask furniture
stores what people are asking for that they cannot
supply. Your jaw will drop when you find out what
the stores are able to pay you, but if you organize
your methods and hire help with the sanding and
other semi-skilled work you can make some money
at it.

Reclaimed and recycled materials made into one-of-a-kind
furniture pieces is hot these days. Owners of such
work enjoy telling the story of how it came to be…
kind of like a provenance for an antique. This sort
of thing adds emotional resonance to the work and
can dissolve price resistance to the extent that the
work appeals to the customer’s self image. Look
at the Restoration Hardware catalogs… it’s all about
this sort of emotional appeal.