Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Schoedler.
Hi Alex, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
A little bit about myself, I was born and raised on the southern new jersey coast by two loving parents who both are music majors. My Dad still plays jazz bass professionally and has a few albums that he has produced over the years. Growing up my parents always fostered art & creativity, which in my view is what has allowed me to get to where I am today. From building forts in the backyard to what I do professionally now (Structural Engineering & Woodworking), thinking and solving problems through the lens of an artist is what I would say is my greatest asset for myself, and also the biggest tool I have at my disposable.
Regarding my woodworking, back in the fall of 2023 I had a desire to build nightstands for my wife and I. I was fed up with the type of quality we’re so used to getting nowadays from online furniture sellers and thought to myself that I could do a better job on my own. I was getting tired of needing to assemble my own furniture with allen wrenches, and instead I decided to make a set of nightstands that would have joints held together predominately with glue and friction only, and assembled with a wooden mallet and brad nails only where required. I leaned on my engineering skills and technical drafting background and used 3D modeling software to design the nightstands first on the computer. I then used a CNC machine at a local non-profit workshop “Asmbly” to cut all of the parts from baltic birch panels. It was a lot like “Tetris” using the CNC machine, and I wound up having a few extra parts lying around when I was done the way it worked out, so I decided to build a few more nightstands to see how they might sell on Facebook Marketplace. Turns out other people wanted the nightstands also!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It certainly hasn’t been a smooth road, and lately it feels like I have completely fallen off the road to put it bluntly! I don’t want to discourage people though who are trying to start their own business, I would just anticipate it being a bumpy road, and I wouldn’t expect anything different. In a nutshell it’s all about being positive, pushing onward, and so long as you are passionate for what you are doing, and it’s benefiting people, than the bumpy road becomes worth it.
Woodworking has been an awesome creative outlet for me, and it’s great that I have gotten the response that I have to motivate me to continue, otherwise I think I would’ve stopped doing it months ago. To speak more to the struggles, sometimes it can be a struggle even when the business does well. For example, I discovered that my nightstands were very popular when I first started a couple summers ago. I was building nightstands left and right, always in pairs, and while they sold fairly easily, I also felt myself getting burned out from them quickly always needing to build them in sets. Worse, I made a decision to create a large back-stock around labor day, and what I didn’t know at the time is that nightstand sales are highly seasonal around moving months! I was stuck with about a dozen nightstands that my wife called “the art installation” stacked up in our living room. While it would’ve only taken a couple of weeks to sell them during the summer, It took over 6 months to sell them in the fall and winter due to the seasonality of buying.
What i’ve learned from it is that for custom items, it’s also worth getting deposits and clients are often OK waiting a couple of weeks to receive something made for them personally…. it can even make them more satisfied with the product having to wait. What I also learned from building nightstands is that sometimes while you can build an item that sells, it’s important that you also enjoy what you’re building, regardless of what your margins are, and don’t get too far ahead of yourself. What this lead to is me dropping the production of nightstands altogether, and instead it motivated me to design a better singular product, the “Basic” record cabinet, which ultimately took my furniture business and skills as a woodworker to the next level.
Learning how to bend wood certainly wasn’t easy either! There was a good 1-2 weeks of going into the workshop, attempting to CNC kerfs into test pieces, and then figuring out a way to bend and clamp the test piece without it breaking. I probably broke about 20 test pieces before coming up with the right settings and finding the right tool bits to make the perfect rounded corner that now all of my designs feature. I had plenty of opportunities in that 1-2 week period to give up, but I was too passionate for what I would be able to build after mastering a rounded corner to throw in the towel. In the end I wound up building a curved record cabinet after several failed attempts, and even then it took about 3-4 record cabinets, and some patient initial clients of these cabinets to ultimately get it down. However with all of that time invested, I then continued to sell 40 more record cabinets of various sizes within the span of 18 months!
Right now i’m currently at another major bump in the road, that could have possibility kicked me off the road quite literally. Just recently my truck, a 1971 Ford F250 that I bought in the hopes of using for picking up wood, delivering furniture locally, and transporting furniture to and from the workshop, got into a hit-and-run car accident between my mechanic’s technician, and another driver who fled the scene on a test drive following a repair! This is after a year of fixing & restoring virtually everything in the truck, including brakes, the transmission, rear differential, engine seals…. what amounts to nearly all profits i’ve even made building furniture, and it’s now all tied up in an insurance claim! At the moment it’s difficult to build furniture without a truck, plus it’s been emotionally challenging handling this situation. What I will say is that I am uncertain whether or not I will infact continue building furniture given these circumstances, but at the very least I am happy that 40 or so clients were still able to get one of my pieces, and right now 40 or so people are likely enjoying having it in their living rooms while they listen to their favorite music. To me even though the truck is wrecked, and on paper I haven’t made any money & still owed taxes on the money, It’s still a huge honor to have had the success that I have had building furniture, and I think a lot of people in Austin have appreciated my work, and I’m grateful for their support.
As you know, we’re big fans of Glue & Lagom. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
My local business “Glue & Lagom” is all about making cool record cabinets in the Austin community currently just for people in the immediate area. Lagom is swedish for “not too much, not too little, just right” and in a nutshell my furniture is just that. It’s basic, simple, awesome, and only what you need. My motivation for starting a furniture business was that the furniture my wife and I were getting was simply poor quality, and it just felt like I could make something much cooler and of better quality for the same price or less. I wanted to create pieces that wouldn’t require self-assembly, have some degree of customization (i.e. choosing the veneer and stain), that would be essentially an art piece, and also something that multiple people can enjoy/interact with in a social setting. Record cabinets and bar cabinets made a lot of sense, and in my view these items are “fun” pieces of furniture that people seem to value. While I wouldn’t say my furniture is exactly cheap, I do think for it being made-to-order it’s relatively reasonable in price. To me it felt there was no in between: either it’s allen wrench self-assembled flat-pack furniture, or ultra high-end bespoke custom furniture made of solid mahogany. What’s nice is that Glue & Lagom is somewhere between those two extremes, with an emphasis on supporting the local community through our no-ship model. Furthermore I made a risky decision to do it with a classic truck, which was both necessary and unnecessary all at the same time. For me the idea of having a cool record cabinet built in Austin TX, getting dropped off at your house in a 1971 Ford F250, was just too cool and wacky not to try it, and for those that had their piece delivered their reactions were always super worth all of the stress having a truck that old in need of constant repairs. Through local postings, instagram, word of mouth, and through local businesses like Breakaway Records and Brane Audio putting my record cabinets on display in-store for the local community to see, i’m incredibly grateful for the positive response I’ve received by the local Austin Community, and i’m excited to see what happens next.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I’m not a third generation woodworker! I just put my mind to learning how to do it and I continue to learn from more experienced woodworkers when I’m in the shop! I also do this all at a non-profit workshop, the Asmbly makerspace, and have virtually no overhead costs aside from my monthly membership. You don’t need to put up significant capital to start a furniture business, you can simply join a shop! By the way there’s a whole lot of other crafts you can pursue at Asmbly, from laser cutting, 3D printing, metal working, ceramics, etc.
Pricing:
- Starting at $549+ tax
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gluelagom.com
- Instagram: @glue_andlagom
