Progress Update on Custom Framing Business

May 24, 2023

It has been a while since I have had a post and have been busy filtering through the inventory of custom framing equipment and supplies. I bought the assets from Bill Edwards of Edwards Reproductions…probably one of the nicest people you will meet, with his wife included.

There wasn’t a lot of “negotiations” going on. I felt the price for the lot was fair and there were a ton of things that Bill ended up adding to the lot, he was very generous. It was a good deal for all involved and confident Bill feels the same way.

So, I ended up hiring a moving company to move all the inventory into a storage unit and luckily it all fit into my rented 10’ x 20’ unit at Public Storage on Stickman where I have 2 other units (somewhere in all of this, I am pretty sure I almost died…I’ll talk about that another day). While I was originally thinking of moving all the woodworking into my garage, I ended up deciding to just leave it in the 15’ x 30’ unit with 2 of the cars. The climate controlled unit will continue to be where I do the final mounting and detail work for the framing (as well as continue with my eBay business). The new unit with all the inventory will stay there and essentially house all the mat board, moulding and other supplies.

It has taken me about 2 weeks to get to a good point where I have all the mat boards sorted within one of the two racks which were included and today I just completed the bulk of the inventory of all of the moulding….a massive job. I have roughly 125 unique styles of moulding with corner samples of most of them and will create new samples for the remaining.

Since Bill will be referring his past customers to me and I was also in need of a “store front”….I ended up just renting a small office in Spring Hope, NC in the antique store which is part of One Man’s Treasure Auctions. Its a small office, but the price is perfect for me as my intent is to keep overhead low with focus on high quality framing at reasonable prices. I will offer the best prices on the moulding which is in inventory and optionally order from a number of new wholesales/distributors I have established accounts with.

What’s next? I need to finish cutting samples and recording some of the one-off moulding which I had to set aside. Then I need to start setting up the office in Spring Hope, creating displays for moulding and mat board corner samples.

Here are some pictures of the progress I have made:

I just setup the Frame Square Mitre Saw and thrilled with the results of the cut, leaps beyond what I get with a traditional mitre saw. This is very quiet but does draw noticeably more voltage and dims the lights on startup. Not no mention I need to be careful around the extension arms.