Our Story
… in a little red shed in my backyard. It had dirt floors and a little wood stove for heat. I had a background in woodworking, my brother in business, and our father in finance. So with a little bit of hokey electrical work and an old Shopsmith, we turned the backyard shed into our first wood shop! At first, we started by building tables. Dining tables, coffee tables, sofa tables etc. All with a bit of a rustic-modern vibe that was really inspiring to us at the time. After about a year of prototyping we were excited to share our unique aesthetic with the world so we took our products down to a furniture show in Vegas to do just that! To our surprise, one of our tables even made it on the cover of the trade show magazine. While it was exhilarating to see the interest in our products, things didn’t really take off for Dogberry until we added our Dogberry signature style to fireplace mantels and sliding barn doors.
Once we introduced these products to our small business, there was more demand than we could handle! In fact there was so much demand that we shifted our focus completely on these products. We moved out of the backyard shed, and rented a 10,000 sq. ft. building in our little hometown. We quickly started adding employees, some of which were good friends we grew up with. We loved seeing the positive impact we were beginning to have on our small community through providing jobs and a company that the town could be proud of. We quickly grew out of that 10,000 sq. ft. space and decided to buy our first building. It wasn’t a pristine, state of the art building, but it was perfect nonetheless. We enjoyed 2 years in our “new to us” building. And in those 2 years we saw sales double and even triple.
Then one day, something a bit tragic happened. We had a major fire that ended up completely destroying our building. It was devastating, and we weren’t exactly sure what the next steps would be or if Dogberry would continue in general! Luckily, we had a team of incredible employees who helped keep our spirits alive. We crammed production into a building that was half the size and made due, while we began rebuilding. Our team focused heavily on becoming more and more efficient as we had much less space, and only higher and higher demand for our products. In the end, the fire was a blessing. It brought our team and our community closer together, and only increased our abilities to produce quality products at an affordable price. Through our story we have realized our identity as a company. We pride ourselves on creating quality products that any homeowner can not only be proud of, but can actually afford! All while enhancing our community here in our little town. We hope you enjoy your Dogberry products as much as we enjoy creating them!