We are transplanted New Englanders now settled in the mountainous Allegheny of West Virginia. We have the highest and second highest mountain in the state in our county. We have 3 mountain rivers flowing through our county and we are proud to say that we own about 800 feet of frontage on one of them. We hope to build on that land next year. Our current home and manufacturing facilities are located on about 3½ acres of incredibly landscaped land with a significant spring coming out of the mountain on this land. At least 14 other houses are supplied by that spring.

This company is actually our second wood manufacturing effort. Our first is located about 6 miles down the road from where I am sitting and occupies an 80,000 sq foot facility and is owned and operated by one of my daughters and son-in-law. In that company we manufacture shelves, country furniture, and shadow boxes. On average, about 3 tractor trailer loads of product per week leaves that facility. We supply a major East Coast craft store chain with their wood products, plus several smaller chains and individual stores. In time I hope to add those product lines to this store.

On the other hand the products that you currently see in this store stemmed from my desire to produce wood products that had considerable detail and finish. While getting the other company off the ground I was using scroll saws for pieces of product, such as scrolled shelves. I really liked the type of things that could be done with a scroll saw as the main piece of equipment and I enjoyed the detail work much more then what was then our typical effort. So I experimented more and more with the scroll saw and after awhile I recognized that I had another product line, plus ideas of other things that could be produced. So we test marketed through several shows and to individual gift stores. The results were quite positive.

The problem we did see is that the cost of sales, that is, selling into this market was quite high. Individual gift stores do not make very large purchases of any one product line so traveling from store to store, making presentations and the small size of the resulting orders added considerably to the price or cost of the items. That is when we decided to look to the internet. After all, in my first life I was a leader and manager of several large computer system designs and implementations so it should be simple, right? Actually not. It has taken a long hard effort and learning experience to reach this point. We will be glad to hear any suggestions for improvement. Just send them along to mtnbrk@verizon.net.

We tested this market by using eBay, first just auctions and then our eBay store at http://stores.ebay.com/Mountain-Brook-Store. This proved to be very exciting.

This product line adventure has three principals. Myself, Dave, my wife Nancy, and my other daughter Corrie. If the three of us ever stand still long enough and I have a fourth person to hand a camera to I will add a picture to this page.

We are excited about the possibilities offered through this medium and look forward to continuously adding new silhouettes plus we have other product lines maturing that we will be adding.

Thank you for reading this and I hope you all have a wonderful shopping experience.

Dave, Mountain Brook Store

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