Scott Jordan - President, Scott Jordan Furniture - New York, NY

Installing a Thermwood model 42 router transformed my woodworking business.
I‘ve been in business for 25 years building high-end solid wood furniture that we sell directly in New York City. I started out in business as a guy with the dream of making a living making furniture; there are many of us, of course. For many years the process was some one-of production and some batch production of good selling items, Mostly beds, dining tables, and desks. Mostly straightforward designs that lent themselves to solid wood construction. It sort of worked after a fashion but there were several persistent problems. Our bed frames, which are crafted along the lines of old rope beds, but using wood slats in place of rope, were good sellers that could be made in batches.

The problem was guessing how many of each size and style to include in a batch that was still unsold. Invariably we would never be able to predict the actual sales pattern. We would be sold out of king sizes and have plenty of queens etc and someone wanting a king would have to be told to wait for the next batch; maybe 16 weeks. You can imagine what effect this would have on a customer’s desire to purchase. The other problem was that we never wanted to introduce new designs because it only served to exacerbate the problem; adding a new batch tied up our shop and increased the lead times even more. Visiting the woodworking shows over the years I would stop and watch in amazement at the CNC router exhibits. Usually the visit concluded with asking the salesman: “Say how much does one of these things cost anyhow? And after hearing a number in the high 6 to low 7 digits walking away thinking “that’s nice for the Big Boys”. Then the prices began to fall as standardized machines were produced. I began to realize that such a machine was not as inaccessible as I had thought.

I bought our Model 42 turret head machine in 1999 and have never looked back. After spending a few weeks looking for the “on” switch we rather quickly got our most time consuming repetitive jobs on the router and then just kept adding to its work load. It wasn’t too long before all of our beds were running on the machine, and then came our dining tables. This changed the paradigm of production just as outlined in Mr. Susnjara’s book. We moved from batch processing to flow process; one at a time production. We didn’t need to guess future demand; we produced to order and with quicker lead times as well. Top quality too. We continued to build a repertory of modifications of our designs that became standard variations, never a need to discontinue a design for weak demand. Business showed with the recession that gripped New York after 9/11 and we were a bit worried. As usual there proved to be a silver lining to this cloud as well. Slack demand? Why don’t we get into some new products? Why not bookcases? We started simple, a few sizes and shapes. The process kept growing, we added doors, then drawers, and new modules of all sorts and from this grew our line of dressers and nightstands, armoires, entertainment centers. Again top quality machining, highly replicable and customizable process.

Much of the bedroom furniture sold today comes from overseas. Who can succeed in the face of this competition. I think that high quality, quick turn-around and high degree of customization are key components of any strategy that hopes to succeed in today’s environment. I thank our continued survival and success to our partnership with Thermwood. Words cannot express the gratitude that I have for not only the vision of the future that Ken Susnjara has given to all of us in his writings but also for the unmatched combination of product and support that Thermwood has provided over these almost 6 years that I have been involved using their machines. I tell anyone who asks (and probably some that don’t) what a fine organization Thermwood is and if they are considering the purchase of a machine to consider not only the bells and whistles that the salesman will invariable show-off but also the support that is necessary to continually operate such a piece of equipment. They are complicated machines, you need someone ther who is willing to hold your hand and get you through the problems. The folks at Thermwood have never let us down.

Last November I started training to use eCabinets. I see it as a doorway to the future.

Scott Jordan, President
Scott Jordan Furniture Inc.
New York NY
sj@scottjordan.com