With family things happening here this weekend, the storefront doors will not be open until around 11:30 a.m., and we will close at 4 p.m. – just in case anyone is planning a visit for a last-minute woodworking gift (and you might instead consider a Lost Art Press gift certificate – no need to venture out!).
We will, however, still be answering your Open Wire questions throughout the day. So leave your question(s) in the comments below, and we’ll do our best to answer. Comments will close at around 5 p.m. Or possibly earlier (so don’t wait until the last minute)!
Also, Chris has a post scheduled for 3 p.m. that includes, among other things, what’s planned for 2024 – so all questions along the lines of, “When is X going to be published” will be referred to said post. And yes, that includes the Dutch tool chest book and Issue 2 of “The Stick Chair Journal.”
I find this difficult to believe…but it must be true. Chris and I have never flown to a place to teach concurrent classes. Or flown concurrently to different places to teach classes. But it is finally happening: Chris and I are both presenting at the London International Woodworking Festival (London, England – not London, Ky.) on Saturday, Nov. 2, and we’re both teaching classes before the festival…which means I had to break down and buy my own hard-sided case in which to pack my tools for the flight. No more borrowing Chris’s Pelican. Or his tools while teaching, as our courses run at the same time.
Whitney Miller, the author of “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” was featured in a solid story this weekend about black craftspeople on the show “Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien.”
In addition to Whitney, the story highlights our friend Jerome Bias and discusses his work to try to correct the history of black woodworkers and their contributions to our furniture record. (Jerome is also working on a book for Lost Art Press.)
It’s definitely worth five minutes of your time to check out this segment.
If this were corporate America, I would have been fired either today or on the Tuesday after Christmas (let him have a nice holiday with his family before we can him).
Lost Art Press shrank about 6 percent in 2023 across the board – that’s sales, revenue, numbers of orders and visitors to our website. So far this year, we’ve shipped out 43,341 books, tools, posters and T-shirts directly to woodworkers (I don’t yet have the numbers for what we shipped to our wholesale customers). That’s about 6 percent down from last year.
In corporate media, shrinking is unacceptable. You have to grow top-line revenue every year and maintain your profit margin – or increase it. Sometimes the goal that was handed down was to grow by 5 or 10 percent during a year, without additional expenses.
Why did we shrink? Because we grew in other ways. We bought a building so we could bring our fulfillment operations back in-house – where they belong. Megan, John and I stuffed a lot of boxes this year and attended a lot of construction-site meetings when we could have been making books or videos.
We also grew as an organization. We added two employees – Mark and Gabe – who run the fulfillment side of our operation. All our employees have company-sponsored health insurance (even though we aren’t required to offer it because of our company’s small size). And everyone started the job with vacation days in the bank.
How we judge success is – thankfully – different than in corporate media. Here’s how I evaluate our year:
Are we eating, paying our bills on time and enjoying what we do?
Do we have enough money in the bank so we can make good books, tools and the like?
What are customers complaining about? Are we getting more or fewer complaints than last year?
Are our authors happy with the royalties on their book(s)?
Do we have enough challenging projects ahead to keep life interesting?
Would I rather push a broom at Costco?
By these measures, Lost Art Press had a good year. To be sure, we had some flubs along the way. Both Megan and I failed to get our primary book projects to press. Both “The American Peasant” and “Dutch Tool Chests” were supposed to be out this year. Not to mention Vol. 2 of “The Stick Chair Journal.”
All three projects are entering the third trimester. We should begin pushing any time now.
So what’s ahead for next year?
We hope the Anthe building will be stabilized and fully operational by the end of January.
Matt Cianci’s book “Set & File” will be out in February.
“The American Peasant” will be out in March.
Other projects will follow: “Dutch Tool Chests,” “Stick Chair Journal,” a new book from Jim Tolpin and Geo. Walker, and full-length videos on building the Anarchist’s Workbench and my Hobbit-inspired stick chair.
I’ll start working on my next book (it’s a pocket book on finishing à la “Sharpen This”).
We also hope to release our claw hammer, plus a couple canvas accessories for your tool chest.
Will we be able to do all that? I hope so. But if we don’t, no one’s getting fired.
I’m not sure yet how I’m getting there, but I’ll be in Tampa, Florida, Oct. 10-14, at the Florida School of Woodwork, teaching folks how to build a Dutch tool chest, soup to nut. Because it’s a week-long class, we should have time to not only install the hardware, but to fit out the interior (as shown above) and get the chests painted!
Andrew is prepping the pine for us now, and will then turn his attention to the battens (oak) and the interior bits (cherry).
There are a few spaces left – and I’d love to see you there…even if you choose to paint yours a color other than blue. (But I can’t imagine why you would!)
And on my getting there: It’s always a series of mental gymnastics for me. If I fly, I can get there in about 5 hours door to door (including time spent getting to and milling around the airport). But it means I have to judiciously decide then pack my tools in a small Pelican case, and pray they make it with no damage (and with one exception in 15 years, they have). But I can’t bring my tool chest – and in thi case, it’s the very chest we’re making. If I drive, it’s about 13 hours door to door, and my back will hate me. But I’ll be able to bring everything I could possibly need – including the chest. And either way, I’ll miss cat.
– Fitz
p.s. Now that “Workshop Wound Care” is at the printer – and I’ve finally finished my last issue of The Chronicle for the Early American Industries Association – I can now concentrate (almost) fully on getting my Dutch tool chest book. (Ya know, along with editing whatever comes in next at LAP, writing blog entries, working on my house, making furniture etc.)