Interview with Warren: Why I chose to make solid wood beds

Warren Evans has been making wood beds since 1979 when he was only 17 years. He believes you have to get good at what you do and it pays off to make good products like his range of wood beds. But how did he get started on the road to wood beds and why has he stuck through it all these years? Why not ask Warren Evans himself?

What first got you interested in wood beds?

When I was a boy, we used to go to Maine as my dad worked as a professor at a college and would get almost three months off in the summer. I’d visit my friend’s father who worked in wood – not wood beds mind you – but he was a boat builder. It was there I first got to use a band saw – I loved playing with it. It’s like a big jig saw like we use on our wood beds and it’s a fantastic tool as you can make things really quickly with it. As a kid, you often nail things together and that’s where I found my love of wood. I discovered how wood can be malleable and yet hard which is probably why I ended up making wood beds.

How did you start up your long running business of making wood beds?

Well I was working for someone when I was about 17 and he told me wood beds were the way forward. As I loved working with wood and natural materials, I starting placing one line adverts in the back of Time Out advertising one of the wood beds I made and it started from there. My first wood bed shop was in Clerkenwell and then I moved to Camden where I could give free parking to my customers.

Was the business of making wood beds always smooth sailing?

Unfortunately I was hit by recession in the 80s and had to declare bankruptcy but I knew making wood beds was still something people would want and need in the future. So I took £4000 and started my wood bed shop again in Camden. I lived, worked and made wood beds all in one place but I built it back up and here I am today. We’ve expanded to four London wood bed shops and I’m still running the company as I think it’s important to keep your hand in so your business keeps the values you started with.

What makes your wood bed company unique?

We’ve always been green, long before it was a fashionable issue and I’ve never used hardwoods in any of my wood beds. Though we might use that type of wood in future, we’ll always use FSC certified wood in all of our wood beds and other products. We also use no veneers in our wood beds so there’s only solid wood. To make our wood beds solid, I’ve designed our wood beds to have traditional joints such as mortise and tenon, and dovetail. Most importantly to me though, is customer service.

Why is customer service important in making wood beds?

You can’t please everyone all of the time even when designing wood beds but when something goes wrong, it’s important to get it fixed and fast. Most of all it begins when you are actually selling the wood bed to the customer. I encourage my staff to only sell the wood bed that someone wants, instead of the most expensive one. If they’re not happy with what they’re actually buying then they’re be more problems in the future. It also helps that we use wood and mattresses that are locally sourced so if there is a problem with one of our wood beds, we have the resources to sort it quickly.

You’ve received recognition recently for your ethical standards. How have you applied that to your making of wood beds and other products?

I’ve always worked with pine even though it has been more fashionable lately to make wood beds out of hardwood. In my opinion, you need to be aware of the environmental impact of your company and with the products you use. Keeping to pine when making wood beds is one way to be environmentally friendly, but we’re also beginning to offer a range of organic mattresses which uses organic wools and cottons that are certified by the Soil Association. We also minimize the use of plastics and packaging when delivering our products by wrapping our wood bed frames in blankets. Soon we’ll be using only bio-diesel in our vans so our deliveries will affect the environment even less. Most excitingly, we’ve recently installed a new type of heater in our new Walthamstow workshop that uses all the shaving and off cuts from our wood beds to heat the building. By doing this we keep two skipfuls of wood products out of the landfill and save on our heating costs with this CO2 efficient heater.

Do you see yourself making wood beds far into the future?

Wood beds have been part of my life for so long now and I love coming to work. I love seeing the people and seeing how much they love my products. Someone who bought a wood bed for themselves when they were newlyweds has come back to get their son a wood bed as he’s leaving home. It makes me happy that my customers know we make products they can trust.

I also love trying to become more efficient as a company. At all levels, from the coffee we drink to the wood we buy, I try to make sure we have a positive impact on the environment and within the marketplace. Hopefully other companies who make wood beds will see what a good way forward being environmentally responsible is and they might make a change. Who knows? But all this here – the company, the shops, the people? I love that my dreams I had 20 years ago are coming true and I’m finishing the stuff I wanted to do then, now.