Crafting customer trust

By TOM BELL, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

E-mail this story to a friend

	Staff photo by John Patriquin On large pieces, Becksvoort adds a compartment with a silver dollar from the year of construction.
	Staff photo by John Patriquin Christian Becksvoort turns drawer knobs at his New Gloucester shop Tuesday. He's making a cherry chest to sell to a New Jersey client for $12,750.

NEW GLOUCESTER — When he opened his own woodworking shop more than two decades ago, Christian Becksvoort sought to make furniture so exquisite that people would call it art. Today, having accomplished that goal, he's more interested in figuring out how to streamline his business.

"I can do this in the dark," he says of his furniture-making work. "It's the business that keeps me on my toes."

Becksvoort fashions very beautiful and very expensive furniture. He's now finishing a chest that he's selling to a New Jersey woman for $12,750. Inspired by Shaker design principles, the 4-foot-tall chest is made entirely of solid cherry wood and has 190 individual parts

Becksvoort has had only about 300 customers in his career. He calls them "clients." Some act like wealthy art patrons, filling their homes with Becksvoort furniture and establishing personal relationships with him.

Becksvoort is now facing a problem, though. His best patron, a New York City eye surgeon who owns 22 of his pieces, has just retired and moved to Switzerland. Becksvoort must find new clients. He must find people who trust him enough to give him a deposit of several thousand dollars and wait six months for him to deliver the product.

That's where his emerging business acumen comes in.

In his tidy shop behind his home in a rural section of New Gloucester, Becksvoort works alone. But his business is all about relationships.

"Ultimately, this business comes down to customer trust," he says. "I'm not selling a product. I'm selling me."

The relationships typically begin with a 1-inch ad in the New Yorker magazine. The $1,700 ad is designed to push people to his Web site, www.chbecksvoort.com, a huge site with links to 15 sections, some of which feature a dozen pages. The photographs, all professionally shot, depict various stages of production and detailed descriptions.

For larger furniture pieces, the Web site notes, Becksvoort fabricates a secret compartment in which he hides a silver dollar of the year of construction.

Becksvoort takes full advantage of his Maine location. The Web site features a view of wintry landscape outside his shop window and describes the wildlife that feed on his apple trees.

The silver dollar and the photos of his snow-encased wood shop serve his marketing tools.

"It's not just a piece of furniture," he says. "It has to have a history and a story with it."

Becksvoort methodically monitors the results of his advertising. Before he created the Web site 10 years ago, he says, each New Yorker ad would generate 50 to 75 catalog requests. After he ran the ad with the Web address, he received only about five catalog requests, leaving him to conclude the strategy was a failure. But then he discovered that the Web site was weeding out the window shoppers from the serious buyers.

That made his life simpler. In both his business structure and his furniture designs, he aims for simplicity. He only works with cherry wood, for example, eliminating the need to carry a large and expensive lumber inventory.

New customers typically order a small piece and later order larger pieces as they develop more trust in him. Sometimes, they fly to Maine to meet with him and see his shop and showroom. All of his deals are done with verbal agreements rather written contracts.

He typically works 30 billable hours a week in his shop (at $100 an hour), plus he works another 30 hours to run the business.

Being a fine craftsman is only a "starting point" for running a successful shop like Becksvoort's, says Rod Regier, who manufactures pianos in Freeport. He says Becksvoort is savvy in the way he markets himself.

"He's figured out a long time ago," Regiers says, "that delivering the goods is not enough."

Becksvoort has worked hard to establish credibility with consumers and other woodworkers. He has written two books, "In Harmony With Wood," and "The Shaker Legacy," which is considered the most important book about Shaker furniture, according to Leonard Brooks, director of the Shaker Museum and Shaker Library in New Gloucester.

In addition, Becksvoort is a contributing editor to Fine Woodworking magazine. He travels out of state several times every year to teach workshops, and he runs workshops at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester.

Becksvoort also volunteers at the village, where four Shakers continue to live. With donated labor, he has built the lectern the Shakers use in the meeting house and another lectern for their chapel. He also created display cases for the museum, and has repaired several pieces.

Becksvoort does not duplicate Shaker furniture, Brooks says. Rather, he shares their values, such as their love of craftsmanship and simplicity in design and function.

At age 58, Becksvoort chooses his projects more carefully now, eliminating larger pieces that he no longer can lift by himself. It's satisfying, he says, to create beautiful objects that can survive at least 200 years, the age of the oldest Shaker antiques.

"Craftsmanship is ultimately what it's all about," he says. "But if you can't sell it, there's no point making it."

Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at: