Chartreuse in a Painted Room

The Guild began in 2008, and it began as an argument. Ohio’s Amish and Mennonite furniture shops were watching imported case goods undercut work that took them weeks to build, and a handful of them decided the answer was not to compete on price but to stand together on standard. They formed a guild.

What started as a stand has become an infrastructure. More than 180 builders belong to it now, along with the finish shops that spray their work, the haulers who move it and the suppliers who feed them hardwood. They are competitors who share a lumber market, a labor pool and a reputation, and they worked out a long time ago that the reputation is the part they hold in common.

It matters to us because of what it lets us do. Matt grew up in his father’s Ohio furniture store and has been walking these shops for most of his life; the Guild is how he keeps finding new ones. A piece we put on the floor in Charleston might come from a shop of six people in a county most of our customers could not place on a map, and it will have been held to the same standard as the piece standing next to it.

Guild members no longer build only hardwood. Upholstery, outdoor poly, mattresses and finishing have all come in under the same roof, which is why the organization took the broader name. For us that means one set of relationships reaches into most rooms of a house.