Plymouth-Thatcher Smith opposed grain by opening the Plymouth Live Edge in the midst of a pandemic.
“This is not what I expected,” he said.
Before COVID ruined everyone’s lives, Smith was engaged in selling equipment in restaurants. Like the entire service sector, his work was hit hard by shutdowns and restrictions.
His interest in working with live edge slabs, where the natural edges of the tree remain, rather than being cut to uniform size and bark peeling, was due to family history and his desire to make it himself. Was born. His previous life seats and table pieces.
His uncle owns a mill in Maine, and Thatch collected some live edge slabs from his father’s property after he died.
“It was strictly a hobby and a small by-product,” he said.
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What started by selling some of its work through the Facebook Marketplace, which is still a major source of new business, quickly emerged as a full-fledged business opportunity, as well as word-of-mouth and repeat customers.
It was this move that surprised his wife, Jen, a PE teacher at Nathaniel Morton Elementary School in Plymouth.
“Are you going to sell the tree?” He recalls asking her in a tone with surprise and perhaps a little skepticism.
Spouse approval
Smith is now happy to report that Jen has her own share of the woodworking project under her sanding belt.
“She was really crazy about it,” he said. “Everyone is getting it now,” including two children, Lincoln and Grady.
His parents chose his notable name from a book with a title he didn’t remember. He appreciates that they gave him an interesting name to balance his common name. The couple chose their child’s name with that in mind.
The business really became a reality when he set up a store at 34 Alden St. in Plymouth on the corner of Standish Avenue, the former location of the Piece of Cake bakery that moved to 144 Westerly Road.
In addition to securing a place for business, the couple made a further commitment to the venture by moving to a new Standish home a little less than a year ago. The house is just 7 doors below the store itself.
Smith is usually right there because there is a small sign (of course a wooden sign) near the entrance of the store, which customers can contact by phone or text, saying they are open “by appointment or by chance”. ..
Smith said he wasn’t sure who was exactly attracted to the idea, looking at the potential for new and unusual career changes.
“I didn’t know what the customer base would be,” he said.
He soon learned that the foundation would change as much as the piece of wood itself. When the customer sends him a photo of the finished work, he can experience a special thrill.
“Everything was either a table or a bar for me,” he said. “But there are only millions of possible uses.”
Growing customer base
His customers come from all over the region and have people from Connecticut, New Hampshire and Boston trek to high-end species such as Siberian elm and black walnuts.
He has seen new trends in the last few years leading to new uses for his products. One of the popular uses for small cuts is the pork board used to lay out a mix of salted meat, cheese, olives, nuts and fruits. And crackers.
“I had never heard the word’pork’, but now I noticed that I say it at some point almost every day,” he said.
He collects fragments everywhere possible, creating a source of certain abundant materials in the damage to trees after a storm. Smith often pays for the debris he brings back instead of asking the homeowner to come home and remove the debris.
“I don’t reduce them,” he said. “I just chopped them up.”
Smith cleans the debris and sands them so that his customers don’t suffer from the debris they endure as a work hazard.
“I love to see the beauty underneath,” he said. “Nature is the best artist.”
Like most devoted business owners, Smith sometimes takes his work home with him.
The new cherry cabinets in his house were made and installed by contractors using wood from Smith’s supply, and the wooden floors they laid down could be made from what he had at hand. Couldn’t, but Thatch said he received a significant discount from the contractor bartering his wood for the contractor’s service.
“It’s really cool,” he said. “I like the barter system.”
A couple of big white pickup trucks pulled out last Thursday, signaling that he had to say who and why he would come to his store.
George Lukin and his wife Dale said they came from Attleboro after seeing one of Smith’s ads on Facebook Marketplace. They were looking for two big slabs to make a table.
Smith set about measuring, and he quickly found two parts that fit the bill, but they needed to be truncated to fit the couple’s trucks, which he was pleased with. ..
Dale elaborated on the table plan as he talked about thunder, oil and finishing at the store, using equipment to make sure the wood was dry enough. The table legs are made of Jack Daniel’s whiskey barrels. A special trip to Tennessee.
Dale thanked her for doing a “naive style” project that there was no fixed plan to follow, and as Smith generally said about his customer base, they He said he was enthusiastic about realizing his general idea.
“It’s just for us, so there’s no right or wrong way,” she said.
It’s an attitude that keeps Smith from returning to his old life, even though his carefree sales skills were conveyed when he talked to Lucins at the end of the sale.
“If I didn’t really love it, I wouldn’t have done this yet,” he said.
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