End of May Update
Hello everyone, and sorry for the delay between posts. There’s been a lot happening on the business side that does not make for exciting updates. Having said that, I do have some exciting milestones we have completed. We are now an official Wisconsin company registered as The Joinery, LLC. I’m amazed at how simple it is to form a company in Wisconsin. The tough part was all the work that went into deciding to form a company, how to form it, and what type of company. We have also secured our initial funding, and we are ready to hit the ground running. I will take a quick second to note that we needed a company to operate, pay taxes, and get insurance. Our primary objective is not to get rich. Our goal is to create a sustainable business that continues to re-invest in itself and help keep the craft of woodworking alive. It could just as well be a non-profit company and maybe will become one someday, but it was easy today to get an LLC up and running.
Our second bit of good news is that we are in final negotiations on a lease for our building. I don’t want to say too much now because we know negotiations can go bad quickly. But I wanted to mention it because knowing what size and type of building we will have lets us start doing some real planning. Also, based on our current negotiations, we have an idea of a timeline that may be possible. If all goes well, our lease will begin on September 1st of 2023. We will have to do some work to the building to make it work for a woodshop and classes, and we have to get my current shop machinery moved and acquire any new tools and benches we need to get started. We think we can get all of that done in two months. If that all goes to plan, we hope to start taking pre-orders for memberships in August, with actual memberships starting in November. We also hope to have one or two classes start in November, just in time to make Christmas Gifts.
With things moving now and more of the plan known, I plan to start doing more frequent updates. Watch in the next week or so for an update on the types of classes we will be offering during our first year. Following that, there will be an update on membership types and costs. And as always, if we get any good news or significant progress, we will post it on the blog.
If you’ve been following us on Instagram or Facebook, watch for more posts on our progress, my thoughts on building a workshop, and maybe some reposts of my past blogs or stories from the last several decades of woodworking.
