RetroWorks was born out of passion for the industrial style aesthetic. Over the years together, Jamie and I sought out and purchased a lot steel furniture, including a coat rack, a bar cart, an office desk, a coffee tables and a media console. While in all of these cases, we love the appearance of these items, we noticed that they lacked the enduring quality and craftsmanship we'd hope for in an industrial piece. Some began to rust and some were made of a lower grade steel that didn't hold up to weight of the items, like a TV, that we'd put on them.
When it came to looking for our bookshelves, Jamie, an engineer, with a life-long enthusiasm for making furniture and custom home renovations, decided that he could design and make a couple of shelves for us that would adhere more closely to the true industrial quality we were seeking.
The end result was one that we were very happy with and the shelves feature prominently in our living room still to this day. The entire process involved to make these shelves, from their meticulous design to sourcing materials and then making the shelves was one that we enjoyed so thoroughly together that we decided launch a company where we could craft furniture for others that lived up to our view about the quality industrial furniture should exhibit.
Our wish to pursue this vision would have quickly fallen apart if we had to pursue a bricks-and-mortar store to market our products from. If it were not for the Internet, RetroWorks would not have even gotten off the ground and we wouldn't now be on the cusp of celebrating our first (extremely productive and exciting) year. Because of the Internet, many artisans, like us, have found a new way to reach their customers. Similarly, consumers are equally benefiting from a resurgence in quality handcrafted furniture of all types and styles from artisans around the world. There will always be a time and a place for big box (or even flat box) furniture, but thanks to the Internet, this is truly a great time for the skilled artisan and for customers coveting quality products.
We recently wrote an article about this phenomenon in Medium, Making it Real - The Rising Trend in Furniture Design and we hope you'll swing by to check it out.
Photo Credit: thegoodphoto on iStock by Getty Images