Business Spotlight: Wood Merchant LLC

Owners: Rick and Sue Braun

Founded: 1987

Address: 49 W. Highway 86, Lampe, MO 65681

Phone/Fax: (417) 779-5324

Web: www.wood-merchant.com

E-mail: woodmerchant@wood-merchant.com

Products: Handcrafted furniture and decorative accessories from salvaged logs, timbers, driftwood, burls, metal, glass and stone

2006 Revenues: $100,000

Employees: 3

Rick Braun is a tree-hugger by trade.

“There’s an aura – a good feeling around an old tree,” says Braun, aka the Wood Merchant, whose appreciation for Ozarks native woods has inspired his 20-year career as a furniture designer. “Our niche has been to salvage old trees. To me, they tell stories. I feel fortunate to work with wood.”

Braun and his wife, Sue, own Wood Merchant LLC, a design studio at 49 W. State Highway 86 near the Highway 13 junction in Lampe. Rick Braun specializes in creating one-of-a-kind furniture and decorative accessories from various types of freshwater driftwood, salvaged wood, logs, timbers, wood burls, metals and glass. He mostly works with native Ozarks wood – walnut, cherry, sycamore, cedar, maple and white oak.

Salvaged career

Braun got into furniture construction by chance.

In the early 1980s, he lost his construction and maintenance job with Dogwood Canyon near Lampe when the company went out of business. Braun traded the back wages the company owed him for some timber on its property. Thinking he would make several hundred dollars by selling the timber to a saw mill, Braun was shocked when he was only offered $60 for the wood.

Inspired after visiting a wood-carving exhibit in Colorado Springs, Co., in early 1987, Braun decided to saw the timber and use it himself. He found his first corporate client that year.

“I was commissioned by Silver Dollar City to build a display fixture for the National Woodcarvers Showcase,” Braun recalls.

The Brauns also advertised their business through arts and crafts shows such as the one they still attend at War Eagle, Ark., to develop a following of personal clients.

Johnny Morris on horseback

In 1991, Rick Braun’s big break literally came riding into his front yard on horseback. It was Johnny Morris, founder of Springfield-based outdoor retailer Bass Pro Shops.

At the time, Braun was working out of a cabin on 55 acres he still owns in Dogwood Canyon, which has since reopened under Bass Pro Shops’ umbrella. Morris, who was in the area looking over nearby property, saw Braun’s work and ordered 10 dining room tables and 60 chairs. It led to an even bigger job in 1992. “We built exclusively for Big Cedar Lodge for three years,” Braun notes.

Another coup for Braun was salvaging the historic Liberty Tree, a damaged white burr oak that was removed from Lake Taneycomo’s waterfront when Branson Landing was under construction in 2005. The 200-year-old tree was nearly 5 feet 8 inches in diameter.

“I had followed that tree for over 10 years,” Braun says. “There aren’t many people who have the capability to handle that size tree. I had to make a decision on what the use of that tree would be right there.”

Working through Branson Landing developer HCW Development Co. LLC, which owned the tree, Braun made an 11-foot chef’s table and several bar and wine tables for Liberty Tavern at Branson Landing. Braun traded the balance of his work with HCW for exclusive rights to the remainder of the tree.

Braun says his clientele is split evenly between corporate and individual sources. The company brought in $100,000 in revenue in 2006.

‘No expiration date’

Most business comes from client referrals and repeat customers. One such customer is Juanita Herrell, whose love for cedar steered her to the Wood Merchant. Her home in rural Ava features a dining table, bedroom furniture, fireplace mantels and cabinetry among the 13 cedar pieces she’s purchased from Braun. “Being an artist myself, I like something different,” Herrell says. “I like (Braun’s) uniqueness.”

Prices range from $150 for a simple table lamp to $18,000 for a bar installed in a resort. His favorite piece, a free-form coffee table resting on an irregular root base, sells for about $1,200.

Braun keeps the Wood Merchant staff to a minimum. Sue Braun manages the company, and his stepson, Shawn Gates, is production manager.

Customers like the availability of the staff, according to Gates. “They like dealing directly with the people who make it,” Gates says. “It’s kind of a novelty that they get to deal with you. They get to pick out the material and help put it together.”

Braun often gets calls from customers who need a tree removed from their property. He enjoys using a client’s tree for something other than firewood, turning it into a table or fireplace mantel.

“(Customers) have always seen the (tree’s) outside. To see it in a different form is exciting to them,” he adds. “These trees will be around another hundred years or so. There’s no expiration date.”[[In-content Ad]]