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Woodworkers organize in Highland
BY JAMES JACENICH • STAFF WRITER
MONTEREY - Twentytwo woodworkers, ranging from part-time hobbyists to full-time artisans, most from Highland, and two from Bath County, held the first meeting of the Allegheny Highlands Woodworkers Guild.
Gary Johnson, Bo Aldredge, Tim Duff and Todd Frye formed the governing committee. They will organize and plan events, coordinate marketing efforts, and facilitate communications between the members.
"Bo and I started talking about this about three years ago," said Johnson. "(We discussed some of the) problems facing woodworkers in the Highlands - lack of a local market, lack of marketing ability, high selling fees, and limited learning opportunities."
Six months ago Aldredge, Monterey woodworker David Blanchard and The Highland Center executive director Betty Mitchell met to share ideas on how to organize a guild. Mitchell chairs the Highland County Economic Development Authority and, as executive director of The Highland Center, oversees the center's business incubator as well as provides a liaison with the Small Business Development Center in Harrisonburg and Small Business Administration.
Later, woodworkers Tim Duff and Todd Frye lent moral support.
After winning a seat on the board of supervisors, Blanchard backed away from a leadership role in the guild, but maintains his interest in participating in and assisting the group with his technical expertise. Blanchard attended Tuesday's meeting along with Mitchell.
The mission of the guild is "To improve the knowledge and skills of associate woodworkers, whether hobbyists or professional, and to promote the sale of their products through cooperative marketing activities.
Johnson said he was looking for members from the region, including Bath County and Pocahontas and Pendleton counties in West Virginia.
The next meeting might take six to eight weeks to arrange as the committee looks for a guest speaker. The guild hopes to hold a monthly meeting thereafter, perhaps varying meeting locations to accommodate a shop visit or guest speaker.
Members expressed interest in learning about joint types and how to make them, finishes and techniques, wood selection, supply sources and pricing strategies. The committee will arrange for guest speakers on these topics in the coming months.
The guild hopes to have its first joint sales event in the fall, perhaps at the annual Hands and Harvest festival. "We want to reach out to people who are looking for quality goods," said Johnson.
He said education is one of the goals of the guild because it is easier to have a teacher than it is to learn by trial and error.
Dues for the guild are $30 a year. That will cover costs of correspondence, postage, communication with members and speaker fees. Guild members might incur additional costs to cover group advertising and marketing.
Whatever costs the guild has, though, the committee expects to be less than what individual wood workers pay to market their products on their own. Some guild members mentioned that the cost of consigning items at retail outlets could run as high as 40 percent of the price charged for the item. For many in the group, the cost of selling goods that way takes away all the profit,after factoring in costs of materials, labor and manufacture.
Johnson said the guild would join the Allegheny Craft Network, which provides a free listing on its Web site to artisans in the region.
The guild might also schedule out of town trips to visit regional workshops, including forming a relationship with Pocahontas Woods in Pocahontas County, W.Va.
One of the most important reasons for forming a guild, however, is collective wisdom, said Johnson. "A group of people usually come up with better ideas than one working on his own," he said.
Valley Building Supply, Inc. of Bath County, in a show of support for the guild, donated a door prize and promised more to follow, said Duff.
Ann Wefer, a wood worker hobbyist from McDowell, won an Irwin Quick Grip clamp.
Mitchell said she looked forward to working with the guild in the future. While not certain, there is a possibility of the guild having a workspace in The Highland Center, Mitchell said.
"We are 100 percent supportive of the group and will provide that support in the form of space, technical and clerical help as the group gets off the ground," said Mitchell. "We are certainly open to conversations about the members' identified needs and how that might fitinto the center's future plans, while being mindful that the efforts dovetail with our mission.
"In our 10 years of existence we have always encouraged community groups to work together to develop synergies and consider ourselves a catalyst for a variety of projects. Wood is an obvious industry in the county/ region and to the extent that we can support value-added efforts for local businesspeople in any given industry, that's certainly a part of why we are here."
For more information on the Allegheny Highlands Woodworkers Guild, call Bo Aldredge (540) 468-2917, Gary Johnson (540) 839-5791, Tim Duff (540) 468-3094, or Todd Frye (540) 468-3737.
The committee asks those interested in joining the guild to complete the survey that accompanies this article and return it to The Allegheny Highlands Woodworkers Guild, c/o The Highland Center, P.O. Box 556, Monterey, VA 24465.
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