Short Video on Family Shoji Shop in NYC


Trip

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Thanks for posting this Trip.   Videos like this make you want to just spend more time in the shop.  Looking through some of the photo gallery, I wonder if they make most of their own tools, I would be interested to know.

Edited by Chet K.
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==>Wait so these guys like beautiful wood and never really learned business by their own admission...

That’s really the point of the NYT’s Entrepreneurship Series – highlight small businesses that succeed with (or despite?) a simple operating philosophy.  Running a bespoke furniture studio for 60 years in Manhattan can’t be all that easy... He must be doing something right... The other videos in the series are similar -- small businesses succeeding -- but more with an 'idea' than a business plan... The video on Skully Systems is interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/video/business/smallbusiness/100000003846742/brothers-of-invention.html?playlistId=1194811665308

 

Captured some of Chosuke Miyahira's quotes... There might be something in them for a hobby-come-small-business guy who doesn’t want to perpetuate Shaker, Mission or Ikea-esque occasional pieces... Very Soul of the Tree, which is worth reading...

"With nature, it’s easy. We don’t have to work anything; we don’t have to design anything: Just find old nice wood. Slice it --- beautiful – you use it. If not beautiful, you don’t use it. It’s very simple."

"Woodworking business like bicycle... You peddle, bicycle can move – no profit. But sometimes, downhill come – you don’t have to peddle and bicycle still go, then hit the bottom. You have to get off and push the bicycle. Business like this." Makes up and down motion...

"Family don’t have business mind, profit mind – just art stuff... We never learn business, more craftsman..."

 

BTW: notice how he checked the plane iron edge with a  loop... And, while appearing deceptively simple, that Tatami platform bed looked better then anything I could make...   http://www.miyashoji.com/futon/

Edited by hhh
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