Chad Dickinson got into furniture making because of a simple life transitions. He got married. He got a house. And he couldn't find any furniture he liked for it. So he decided to make his own.
"I just sort of fell in love with making furniture," Dickinson says, adding that furniture-making dovetails nicely into his practice of Zen Buddhism.
That was the genesis of
Dickinson by Design a little more than three years ago. Today the boutique furniture maker employs three people and recently moved into the
Green Garage, where it is making its sustainable furniture composed of recycled materials.
Dickinson and his wife started the business in Nashville and moved to Detroit in 2011 shortly after launching the company. What inspired him was the "big gap" he saw between the quality of furniture made by the likes of
IKEA and
Herman Miller. So he aims to build furniture that is both high-quality and not super-expensive.
Dickinson by Design also builds all of its furniture from recycled materials, such as turning old bowling alley flooring into tables. The company has leveraged its slogan of "Design. Build. Refine. Repeat." to slowly but steadily build its business. It recently hired two
College for Creative Studies graduates to help meet its demand and signed a lease for space in the
Green Garage, a small business incubator that specializes in helping build companies with a focus on social entrepreneurship and sustainability.
"I just felt an immediate kinship with the people there," Dickinson says. "I felt they were looking for the same things I was."
Source: Chad Dickinson, founder of Dickinson by Design
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.