A Marketer in Training: Julianne Yurek

Julianne Yurek

Although we hate to see Alison Heath leave us as director of marketing, we will be in good hands with Julianne Yurek. Julianne, who graduated from James Madison University last spring, will be working with one of our owners, Ricardo Berrum, as she gets up to speed.

The story of how Julianne came to be with us is as interesting as any of our customers, which include her parents.

First, though – and we love this – she took a break after graduating by heading out to the Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexcio. This place is like Mecca for Boy Scouts, who come from all over the country to this 165,000-acre spread each summer – 20,000 of them in all. They spend the entire summer hiking through the back country, rock climbing, logging, learning music, watching the stars, even learning about weather.

The Tooth of Time at Philmont Scout Ranch

Baldy Mountain at Philmont Scout Ranch

Julianne, who heard about the gig through an Eagle Scout friend of hers, worked at the trading post and hiked every weekend. “It’s really life-changing for some of those young men,” she says. And by the way she describes it, it might have had a similar effect on her.

When she came home for the fall, the interior design major found out that her parents had just ordered the Waterfall chest from Hardwood Artisans, but her mother was worried about the order. The light finish she requested might not go well with the yellow walls in the house, and her mother wanted to know Julianne’s opinion. “When I come home, I always play interior designer for my mom.”

She ended up calling Mark and putting the order on hold. Julie came down to the shop and met Alison to discuss a better finish for their chest. Here is the result, in mahogany with curly maple accents:

Waterfall Chest in mahogany

Waterfall Chest side detail in curly maple

While Julianne was there working out the new design and finish, she and Alison got to talking, Alison asked for a resume, and as it would happen, Alison’s assistant ended up leaving fairly soon thereafter for another job. Enter, Julianne!

Now that she’s been here for five months, we asked her about her favorite pieces. “I’m still on the fresh-out-of-college budget,” she says, but: “I’ve been eyeing the platform pedestal bed – I really love it.”

Platform Pedestal Bed

She’s also falling for the Shinto Bench. “It has beautiful details in it – it’s an elegant design.”

Shinto Benches in mahogany and walnut

We asked Julianne about her marketing goals for us, and she said she’s most interested in featuring the work of local artisans in the Fairfax showroom. “I think it will be neat to involve more local artists in our store and bring the community together,” she says.

She also wants to put more of her interior and graphic design skills to work. “I believe our furniture is a functional piece of art and deserves that respect. I am excited to engage more interior designers and art collectors with our company and keep up the excellent reputation it already has,” she says.

We have nothing but great expectations.

Auf Wiedersehen, Good-Bye

Must all good things really come to an end? Alison Heath, our marketing director extraordinaire, will be leaving us after this week. Her last day in the showroom is Sunday.

Alison Heath

She came to us in 2007 after a career in marketing for non-profit organizations, and after a well-earned spring break, she plans to return to that realm. We’re just happy she decided to venture into our realm for a few years.

It all started when Alison was at the Convention Industry Council, but she had developed a habit for vintage and antique furniture on the side. “That was part of why, when I was looking through The Washington Post Magazine, I noticed a curly maple Waterfall coffee table” in our regular ad, she says.

Waterfall Coffee Table in curly maple

She looked us up online, and loved the furniture. “Most people wonder, ‘Which piece should I buy?’ But I was wondering if these people needed any help.”

Alison called General Manager and Co-Founder Greg Gloor, and they later met for an informational interview. That led to Alison working in the showroom part time for about nine months while she kept her day job. Two years later, however, she signed on full time with us.

I asked her what her favorite parts of the job were. “It all comes down to the customers. Where in the furniture world do people just come for a visit?”

Customers – especially our repeat-customers – will often stop into one of our showrooms, ostensibly to look for something new, but end up staying for an hour just to chat.

“It’s like going to work and meeting the coolest new people every week,” Alison says. She adds that another favorite element was writing the newsletter.

“I loved it when someone would come up to me in the showroom and mention something I had written about, like the 3/50 Project (www.the350project.net), which promotes shopping at independent retailers,” Alison says. “It made me feel like I was providing a valuable service and it was fun to share some of my values, like buying local, and events that I enjoy, like Smithsonian programs and exhibitions, with other people who would ‘get it’.”

So why is she leaving? At 31, she’s still exploring different avenues in the marketing world, and she wants to make room for some “balance,” she says, such as her volunteer work with the Smithsonian, her church, and her family when they come into town from California.

And we admit it – a seven-day retail operation has a way of invading every pore of your life – but in a good way, right?

At any rate, it will be hard for her to forget us, as she is the proud owner of two pieces by Hardwood Artisans – a file cabinet she helped design (“sort of a combination of the Linnaea and Essentials styles”), and the pièce de résistance: A platform bed with floating headboard.

Alison's dresser and sideboard

Alison's Platform Pedestal Bed

Alison's file cabinet

“Once you get accustomed to a certain quality of furniture, it’s hard to go back,” Alison says.

We all hope she’ll keep her word and continue coming back to visit. We wish her the best of luck!

P.S. From Mark Gatterdam: Alison’s leaving is very hard for me to get used to. Since almost day one she and I have worked to update the look of Hardwood Artisans. We agreed and fought and settled with each other. We completed each others sentences. She has done a lot of good for this company, and I for one am a much better person for having known her.

Too Wet or Too Dry? Neither, Please

Dry, cracked mud

I remember when I lived in Florida several years ago – with a roommate who hated air conditioning.

Picture it – No air conditioning, in July, in South Florida. Feel sorry for me?

Beyond my personal discomfort, my beautiful vintage walnut dresser was the one that really paid the price. Before I finally moved out in search of better climate control (and a better roommate!), the drawers of my poor dresser had swollen to the point where I couldn’t open them without a significant amount of elbow grease.

The opposite, of course, is true in drier climates, like Washington, D.C., in the winter. Wood furniture can shrink the point where it can crack or become visibly smaller.

Dining room tables can lose almost an inch of their length this way.

Mark Gatterdam recounts the tragic tale of his own house – we’re talking the framing here, which is a bit more consequential than mere furniture. There was a ton of rain on the construction site while he was building his house in Orlean, VA, which caused the framing to swell. The first dry season he and Erika were living there, the framing dried and shrank, causing a spider-web of cracks in his walls that were as much as 5/8-inches wide.

“I had to jack my house back up because the wood framing dried,” he says.

Humidification can be an awfully dry topic (so to speak). But for those of us in the business of hardwood, it’s pretty much what we think about all the time.

Our shop and showrooms have even harsher climates than homes, due to the constant forced air and the multitude of bright, hot lights everywhere.

That’s why, if you visit our shop in Woodbridge and look high into the rafters, you’ll see what look like large rectangular boxes spritzing mist into the air every couple minutes – just like you see in the produce department of the grocery store.

When the system doesn’t work at times, we know immediately, as our lumber piles start to crack.

Our Rockville and Fairfax showrooms are also humidified. Before the system was installed in the new Fairfax showroom three weeks ago, some furniture panels shrank, so they showed an unfinished ring around the edges that once was hidden inside the frame. The birch cabinet doors in our design center also warped a bit, but everything should be back to normal in a few weeks, thanks to the new, higher levels of humidity.

While the concrete floors in the new showroom are really cool, furthermore, the concrete is a thirsty substance that sucks all the moisture out of the air, so the new system will offset that effect, too.

Mark says that once you take a piece of furniture home, it should be fine, unless it’s in an area of extreme moisture (such as a basement) or dryness (if you move to Arizona).

For the most part, he says, wood that is sourced and built in this region is used to the climate, but if you bring it out to the dry West or down to the wet South, there could be issues – just as there were with my nice dresser in Florida.

“It’s one of those things about solid wood that you have to anticipate,” he says. “There’s an awful lot to be said for buying furniture regionally.”

If you’re really feeling geeky, and want to know even more about the effects of humidity on wood, check out this informative article, right here.

A Chat with Matt Donohue, the Winner of Shop Time with Greg Gloor

Besides the owners’ saw-cutting at the grand opening of our Fairfax showroom last weekend,

Owners (left to right): John Hillgren, John Buss, Mark Gatterdam, Ricardo Berrum, Kevin Carlson, Curt Smay

Hardwood Artisans version of a "ribbon-cutting"

One of the highlights of the afternoon was the auction of 30 hours in our Woodbridge shop with general manager Greg Gloor.

Greg Gloor, Matt Donohue, and auctioneer Stan Schelhorn

Of 15 bidders, Matt Donohue placed the winning bid at $1,650 – a real bargain, he said, since few finished pieces of Hardwood Artisans furniture cost so little, and on top of that, he gets shop time with one of the masters to build his own piece.

Matt is a budget analyst for the Army by day, but in his free time he loves to do woodworking in his basement shop in Burke, VA. Keep reading for a full interview on what he wants to do with his prize.

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