Business Spotlight: Workshop Warrior

Jason Frantz isn’t one to romanticize about his job.

As a designer craftsman specializing in custom furniture and cabinetry, Frantz emphasizes the essentials of the trade.

“I never thought I would grow up and build furniture for a living,” he says, standing in his woodworking shop on his parent’s small farm off of Highway 60 between Fordland and Diggins. “There’s a lot of guys who do what I do.”

Frantz works as a one-man shop under the name WoodShop Artisans LLC, which he and his wife Angela started in January 2002.

The shop has an eclectic character with its equipment – ranging from a $3,000 computerized SawStop professional cabinet saw to a 1951 Delta shaper that’s “built like a truck” – complementing the variety of scrap materials such as aluminum, old wooden beams, exotic teak, quarter-sawn cherry veneer and an art deco-styled plastic.

His favorite tools – an 80-year-old Stanley Bailey hand plane and his iPad – also speak to the motley nature of his work. No day is dull, he says.

“That’s what I love. It ranges from traditional to very odd,” he says of the custom projects. “I’ve had people bring me tree branches out of their yard.

“I get to come out here and play with something different every day.”

The most commonly ordered item is the Murphy bed that folds against the wall into built-in cabinetry. Frantz says he’s built nearly 40 Murphy beds, and his portfolio runs the gamut of bookshelves to baby cradles and cabinets to canoes. Currently, his orders are six to eight weeks out.

Last week, he completed and delivered a set of tables and a flat-screen TV stand to Barcade, an upstart bar and arcade in the works at College Street and Market Avenue.

Bud Hogan of Hogan Land Title is notably Frantz’s most active client. Frantz says he’s designed and built more than a dozen projects for Hogan’s east Springfield residence.

Last year, Frantz’s work netted roughly $50,000, a level he’s hovered at the last three years. He says as a one-man shop, his workload would max out at about $75,000 in sales.

While he lives in Springfield, Frantz heads east 25 miles each day to the family property, where he says rent is cheap and lunch is free – most days. Frantz says he’s shooed away thoughts of hiring a full-time employee in order to build the business.

“I don’t want to manage people. I like building furniture,” he says.

Frantz has built his business by connecting with interior designers such as Joyce Buxton of Buxton Kubik Dodd Creative, sole proprietor Erica Praschan and Nancy Asay, an instructor at Missouri State University.

Final Touch Interiors owner Marilyn Raines says Frantz came by her studio to pitch his services as he was starting WoodShop Artisans.

“We’ve been working with him since he began,” Raines says, recalling a presentation he made years ago to her designer lunch and learn group. “It was very interesting because he does those Murphy beds. They are just so handsome.”

Three years ago Raines connected Frantz to her client, attorney John Housley, for a unique project.

Housley had purchased a 100-year-old desk from retiring law partner Bill Joyner, and he wanted to add a matching credenza for his Hammons Tower office at Lowther Johnson Attorneys at Law.

“I work off of my credenza as much as I do my desk,” Housley says, describing the ornate walnut desk as “a battleship.” “I set out to see if I could find somebody to build one.”

Given the desk’s history, Housley wanted to preserve the past while adding functionality with the credenza. The desk was built in the late 1800s in England for the first editor of Springfield News-Leader, and it was later housed at Miller & Sanford PC, one of the first law firms to operate in Springfield, he says.

“It was not an easy piece to replicate due to the unique features in the desk we were trying to mirror in the credenza,” Housley says. “He made the wood trim and everything around it match. I was very happy with the finished product and I use it to this day.”

Now, the set has become an heirloom piece.

“My daughter graduated from Mizzou law school two years ago,” Housley says. “Someday, I’ll pass it down to her.”