Sourcing Wood: Solved
I’ve had this feeling of awe before, standing here in this barn full of incredibly beautiful natural material. It was when I tagged along with my sister and Mom to pick out stone for their kitchen countertops. I was blown away by the huge selection of just stunning giant slabs in a cavernous warehouse near Savannah. It was surreal. I’ve thought of it often since.
This place evokes that memory. One bin after another of absolutely beautiful wood, all collected together. I’m in awe. And it’s only 25 minutes away. I am feeling very lucky indeed.
Wood sourcing: Solved.
I picked out some cherry and some exotic, gorgeous African Mahogany to take home, enough to do dozens of lamps with the layer of trim pieces that are highlighted by the lamp itself as you look up at it. Genius design. Gorgeous wood. Great combination.
They’ll even plane the boards for me after I pick them out – which is great because I’ve come to really dislike planing boards in the driveway. It’s loud and it’s cold. Very cold. Mid-February in Michigan cold. I’ve only done it twice now but that’s enough, for now anyway. And the planer in the garage, owned by my housemate, is having issues. I see a planer in my future, but no rush, they’ll plane the boards I pick now. Awesome.
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My basement shop is shaping up nicely, too, so I no longer will have to trek upstairs to the freezing garage to make any cuts. I took delivery last week of a Dewalt table saw. A 60 tooth blade for fine woodworking is on order, arriving soon. I also set up a shop cam. I’m going to be examining every phase of production for efficiency and safety. I’m going to ‘Henry Ford’ this process, wherever possible. I want to be able to box 500 units per quarter, by year end. Goals. There’s no downside to efficiency, but there’s a lot of upside.
More Blogging About Me…
I wound up in the deck refinishing business, an emerging market in the early 90’s. It checked a lot of boxes for me and allowed me to live the snow-bird life that I came to love for 25 consecutive Winters, but as they say, “The days are long, but the years are short”, and here I am at 66 already. I’ve accepted the fact that climbing around decks all week is for the young guys, not for me any longer, and even though I’ve always said that I like the work, and I’m still somewhat able, it’s not for us… uh, cough, seniors. I feel like I just hit middle-age, not the fourth quarter, but yeah, I guess it’s true: I’m old, technically.
So I’m super excited about this new enterprise, almost seven weeks in now. I still get to work with my hands. That’s important to me, on a deep level. And I get to stay home, in my happy space, that’s an introvert’s dream. And I get to earn a living beyond what social security provides. And I get to run a business. How far I take it is the fun part. I’m already winning, just by doing it. That’s the point.
I feel like the universe is paving the road out in front of me as I journey through the steps to get a smooth operation going. It’s all going very, surprisingly smoothly.
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. The Navy Seals get credit for that quote. When things have to go right, go slow and smooth. I can do that. That’s my favorite pace. That’s what I’m doing. Deliberate actions now that will bear the scrutiny of a future examination. I’m Shark-tanking this venture so now that I have an actual purchase of wood, I can plug in the actual cost numbers. Forecasting. Projecting. Planning. Tracking the metrics. Business Plan stuff. I’m on it. A.i. is assisting.
It’s all coming together remarkably easy and I just keep reminding myself that, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. Lots of small tasks, done well, and a bit of luck, is making it all happen.
My next step, when I’m not in the shop producing, is to apply to the Amazon FBA program. I’ve got a checklist ticked off of everything I need for a flawless application: a real business with an LLC and domain names with a website and a professional email address (not gmail), an original branded product, a (pending) Federally registered (USPTO) trademark, an ein (tax ID), a business banking account, a credit card (not a debit card), upc codes, packaging, everything. I’m shooting for stocking Amazon up with CanMods as soon as I’m approved and determine an appropriate stock level. Big milestone. Looking forward to it.
Why Amazon FBA and why now? Amazon is the largest shopping search engine and opens me up to the international market. It provides two-day shipping to Prime customers and it frees me up. I can still do my own Fulfillment by Merchant on Shopify and elsewhere. I expect it to take some time to see returns from my seo efforts, possibly months. I’m going to find out what works by doing and testing, repeatedly. The smart way. The right way. A.i. can help with that, too.
I expect A.i. will change the landscape of search and I’m going to keep feeding it all the information it needs to put my products out in front of the right people. When I did very rudimentary web development way back in the 90’s, it was a simple matter of titles, keywords, meta tags, image Alt tags, long-form pages of relevant content, etc. and my pages often showed up on the first page of results and I avoided using any bogus tricks to try to game the search engines. The search engines were new, too, in an uncrowded market and still didn’t always get it right, in a similar way to A.i. not always getting it right yet either. SEO is a moving target. Adapting. A.i. too.
[Side story: I was sitting next to one of my regular clients (a well-known shopping mall tycoon family) in her seaside Palm Beach Casa and she typed ‘luxury’ into yahoo and one of my pages came right up: A lizard’s Life of Luxury, which was not the use of luxury she had in mind. It was a page about the cage I built for my brother’s science classroom iguana.
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But I digress… twice.
The challenge here is getting the product in front of the right people. It’s a hard market to profile because beyond the built-in market of fans of Frank Lloyd Wright designs, which is easy enough to find with keywords, ads, possibly link postings, featured references, video shorts, etc. but how else do I reach the people who would buy one of these if they only knew of it, simply because it’s a great product built on a great idea: it solves the downlighting dilemma of ceiling lights - with high-style lamps, shades, technically.
CanMods… modify can lights. It’s got a brand-name feel to it and I’m invested in it now. Let ‘er rip. (The Bear reference, on Hulu. I binge-watched it in December. Means ‘Go for it’.)
“Good light changes everything”, is my tag line now for CanMods. Thank you, ChatGPT for helping me with that. I’ve noticed that ChatGPT is being recommended now by YouTubers and even Shopify for creating a lot of blog copy easily. That won’t be happening here. My blog writing is authentic. I learned during the 90’s journaling and more recently with Facebook that what works for me is to throw every stream of thought out there and then ruthless edit it down to a more focused message or story.
Looks like I might be a little rusty at that ruthless editing thing, but you’ve read this far so…
A bit more background
Speaking of Silicon Valley… It was the California gold rush of the 1980’s and I headed to it straight out of college, 1981. Man, that was a long time ago and it was a different world then and I was young, and here are the pictures to prove it. Steve Jobs and I had the same haircut, coincidentally. He was three years older than me. Saw him around Palo Alto a few times but we never met. He liked cool coffee shops, like Cafe Verona. So did I.
No, really, I had that hair already when I graduated from College and headed West a week later, visiting National Parks along the way (upper right pic). The photo below it was taken a few years later when I was at Xebec in Sunnyvale, CA and a photographer walked into the sales room and grabbed me for a photo shoot for a brochure for our lone product: an external hard drive. 10MB, about $2,000. It was the early 80’s.
I’m ready to settle into a daily ritual now of creating tangible beautiful things. This is the dream come true - dating all the way back then to when I was looking for something other than the Silicon Valley pressure-cooker for my life. I even have sketches of the things I envisioned making: oyster-shell shoji screens and matching lamps. Odd, I know, but I had a Japanese design fixation back then. Frank Lloyd Wright did too, by the way. I never acted on that dream. The timing is much better now. Kaira means: ‘seizing the opportunity’. That’s what the name means to me anyway - and I’m going for it. Let ‘er rip.
Next up: Production. And Amazon FBA. Goals.
-KvZ
Kaira Lights LLC
Est. 2025