Tawny Barn has been trading for a few years, but I’ve not told many people the story of how I got here.
It’s time for an update
I’m Steve.
After 30 years “on the road” fixing machines around the world, I decided to start a business within walking distance from home.
If you ask my friends, they’ll probably tell you I had a mid life crisis.
In my memory, I made a good lifestyle choice.
Woodcraft has been a life long hobby.
That became a business, selling carved bowls, clocks, small pieces of furniture at craft fairs. I enjoyed it, but couldn’t even make minimum wage, selling beautiful handmade products.
Tawny Barn has been my home for over 20 years, when I started the business, I spent ages looking for a name. One day I thought, “where would you expect to find a traditional woodwork shop”.
In an old barn.
From that minute I knew what the business name had to be.
After about a year I had a stall at the “Worker Bee Market”, in Bramhall, Stockport.
Tawny Barn was transformed that day.
It was a nice sunny day. People were enjoying the sunshine but the stall was quiet.
Then a lady came along and started looking at products. Before I could ask her if she needed any help, she asked me a question which changed my business forever.
She asked if I could make a Giraffe!
It was so random. I didn’t have any animals for sale. I was doing woodcraft, she wanted a wooden product, so I was the right person to ask.
I’m lucky she did.
She did embroidery, and wanted a Giraffe shape template to draw round.
We agreed, she would come back next month, so I got to work.
Rather than carve by hand, this was a job for my CNC Router.
The next month, back at Bramhall, I took her Giraffe. I also took a selection of other animals.
Customers loved them!
They were quick and easy to make (compared to hand carving).
My Laser Cutting Business was born.
Woodcraft is still a wonderful hobby, but the market pushed me back into my “comfort zone”. Looking after and using automatic production machines.
Now if there’s a machine problem, I’m already on site.
I don’t have to travel to the other side of the world, to fix it.
Tawny Barn is in a much better position than our competitors.
When there’s a problem with a machine, we don’t have to phone round looking for an engineer. I’m already here! I run the company!
(I’ll probably get criticized by a few marketing experts. Because I’ve admitted we sometimes have problems, “that’s negative, that’s bad Marketing”. I don’t care, I think we all know things go wrong, what matters is how we deal with them.)
Today we’re a VAT registered, Limited company. Tawny Barn Ltd.
We’ve three Medium sized Laser machines.
The fourth, larger machine arrives soon.
We’ll be able to make products up to 120 X 90CM.
It’s onward and upward from here.
If you’d like a Giraffe making, or anything else, click here to request a quote, or you can contact us
