Profile: Common Joinery
Quitting their jobs and launching their own business became a lesson in the most important tool of the trade: customer service.
Photo by Griffin Davis @teamgriffindor
Right before Covid put it’s crummy hands on the world, I had the good fortune of meeting Kyle Reynolds and Nolan Smith, the owners of Common Joinery. I was soon to start an interior design project in the West Plaza area. I knew I was going to have to demo the kitchen cabinets, and wanted to work with a locally owned small business who specializes in kitchen cabinetry. CJ was doing some for Sierra Winter when they caught my attention. I knew then they were the perfect men for the job!
Photos by Griffin Davis @teamgriffindor
Kyle and Nolan hadn’t worked together long before they each realized their chemistry in a work environment would be hard to beat. Having been friends for most of their lives, it was no surprise that working together just came naturally. In the back office of a lawnmower sales and repair shop in the summer of 2015, they began to plot their own version of “The American Dream”: to own and operate their own business.
It would be apparent from nearly day one that the business would be focused around woodworking. Sharing over 15 years of experience, their ability to produce beautiful pieces from tables, bed frames and hutch cabinets was not only a passion– it was also a skill that could propel their livelihood. After tossing around ideas and experimenting with products for nearly three years, in 2018 they had decided on a name and model: COMMON JOINERY– custom, handmade furniture, built to last.
Photo by Austin Grate @grate.lifestyle
That summer they began to promote their brand, COMMON JOINERY, to friends, family and immediate acquaintances. With every finished product seemed to come more and more opening doors, and within months they were feeling organic growth at its finest. It also became clear in this stage that there was a potentially even better, related market to tap into: custom cabinetry. And voilà! Their business took off.
After booking only a couple of cabinet projects, the two partners had started to find ways to improve upon what seemed to just be the nature of the cabinet business. In many cases, potential customers who had dreams of remodeling on a smaller scale (not full kitchens or an office building sized job) had trouble finding a business that was even interested in taking on their project, let alone excited about it. On top of this, the level of communication between business and customer service was, to say the least, poor. Since they shared well over a decade in customer service on top of their woodworking experience, Kyle and Nolan began to pursue an improved experience for customers in need of smaller kitchen and bathroom remodels. They still wouldn’t be ruling out the bigger remodels in the process.
Developing good communication with their customers quickly paid off for CJ, and in mid-2019, projects became more and more steady. At this point, they had started to work with numerous designers to include myself, which brought in an entirely new customer base. To add to their success, their projects with designers led to projects with building contractors. By late 2019 business was in full swing. “Quitting our jobs and going full-time was definitely stressful at first,” Kyle told me, “but we quickly proved to ourselves that we could make a living and grow a business”.
Kyle and Nolan went into 2020 with a goal in mind: to focus as much as possible on organic and local growth. They would continue to build a product that was affordable with uncompromising quality, and most importantly, they would take on projects excitedly with their customer’s happiness at the front of their minds. As these two talented gentlemen continue to manage every aspect of their business by themselves, one thing seems pretty clear: if things continue to keep moving at the pace they have been, it won’t be long before they start expanding and hiring! I wouldn’t be surprised if HGTV came a knocking to offer these hardworking, talented and easy-on-the-eyes gentlemen a show!
