Partners carving out success in hardwood

Nov 24 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A TRIO of entrepreneurs are celebrating after their specialist hardwood business more than trebled its turnover in three years.

Newcastle Hardwood’s revenues increased from £60,000 in 2005 to £200,000 this year and the business is aiming for sales of £550,000 in the next two to three years.

Set up by Nicola Rose, her brother Daniel Rose and friend David Angus, the Ouseburn Valley-based business offers machining services for hardwood importers and hobbyists, as well as producing one-off specialist hardwood products, including bespoke items for interior designers.

The directors have a wide variety of previous experience. Ms Rose studied 2D design at university and worked in theatre set design before turning to woodcraft. Mr Angus studied engineering and Daniel Rose worked in marketing before joining the company.

He said: “I had been speaking to Nicola and David for some time about the future, we are all creative in different ways and thought there was great potential to set up a business.

“We felt that with our combined design capabilities that there was an opportunity to grow a business and that the Ouseburn Valley site, with its central location, would provide excellent access to new business.”

The firm has invested more than £60,000 in new equipment, including a £13,000 wide-belt sander and a re-saw bandsaw that can be used to cut huge pieces of wood.

“We have made the business more commercially robust without losing our customer friendly approach,” said Mr Rose. “In other words we still value the hobbyist business but it is now only 10% of sales with large parts dedicated to big volume work at competitive prices, machining custom and standard objects like architectural mouldings including skirting board, dowels and architraves which accounts for 40% of sales.

“The aim is for the business to grow to such an extent that we can stop using the machinery ourselves and become totally focused on design.”

The business is also environmentally conscious and has a green policy in place. It only uses certified importers and has a briquette press, which converts the waste sawdust into bricks to be burnt as biomass fuel.

We have made the business more robust without losing our customer friendly approach