Crafting a New Brand
Thompson Millwork combines legacy woodworking companies into a consolidated platform for the future
![The Crow’s Nest, featuring white oak paneling, was completed in August 2018 by Thompson Millwork. It is a featured area within Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, which serves as the indoor athletic venue for the Duke Blue Devils.](storyassets/carolinas/feature_stories/S19_NC_FS2_Crafting_a_New_Brand/S19_NC_FS2_Interior1_530x370.jpg)
The Crow’s Nest, featuring white oak paneling, was completed in August 2018 by Thompson Millwork. It is a featured area within Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, which serves as the indoor athletic venue for the Duke Blue Devils.
![The consolidated crew of Thompson Joinery, Aventine and Garland Woodcraft Company, Inc. in January 2019, known today as Thompson Millwork.](storyassets/carolinas/feature_stories/S19_NC_FS2_Crafting_a_New_Brand/S19_NC_FS2_Interior2_530x370.jpg)
The consolidated crew of Thompson Joinery, Aventine and Garland Woodcraft Company, Inc. in January 2019, known today as Thompson Millwork.
In just five years, Thompson Millwork has evolved from a one-man operation working out of a 500-square-foot garage bay to a company with 30 employees, a $5 million capital investment program and an anticipated annual revenue of $10 million in 2019.
Company President Matt Thompson has led his business through a series of acquisitions and mergers and launched new ventures to completely transform his original company, Thompson Joinery, into Thompson Millwork. Initially, when he opened Thompson Joinery in 2013, his goal was straightforward: to provide general contractors and homeowners in and around Durham, North Carolina, with “old-house expertise and problem-solving.” His first projects included historic window rehabilitation and fabrication, molding and door replication, and custom built-ins.
Then, his vision grew and so did his company. Over the past year, after Thompson Joinery acquired and merged with Garland Woodcraft Company, Inc. (Garland), a commercial woodworking shop, and Aventine, a residential cabinetry shop, the company rebranded itself and Thompson Millwork was born.
The amalgamated business now specializes in projects that combine carpentry, millwork, furniture making, casework, finish and design. It draws upon its staff’s rich and varied experiences and skills to complete highly complex projects, working with a broad range of materials. “We strive to build beyond the ordinary to leave a legacy of quality work that conserves and propels the craft forward,” Thompson says.
“We are seeking to do something different that respects the hard-won reputations of the legacy businesses, while keeping an open and adaptive attitude toward emerging technologies and market opportunities,” Thompson says. “We’ve gone from six to 30 employees, and I think we will be at 50 soon. My motivation isn’t to become the biggest shop on the East Coast, but more to see good work done by good people.”
Humble Beginnings
Thompson arrived in Durham 10 years ago and began working as a preservation carpenter and apprentice, mostly in the residential world. He started his own shop about five years ago with a goal of distinguishing himself within the industry. He was skilled at doing detailed trim in the high-end preservation world and custom work, in general.
“I was drawn to the idea of building things,” he says. “I love old houses and loved the idea of historic preservation as an outlet for skilled craftsmanship. It was a radical departure from my path before.”
In 2006, Thompson graduated from Deep Springs College in Dyer, Nevada, before pursuing a degree in philosophy and theology at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. However, before he finished, he moved to Durham to begin his work as a carpenter. He says he decided to venture into his own business partly to support his family and because he had an entrepreneurial streak. “When I first started, I wanted to determine how I could distinguish myself from the competition,” he says. “I was fortunate that Durham’s residential market was starting to boom with a great housing stock of homes built in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s around the downtown core. They were getting renovated as people started moving back to the city. I saw an opportunity to focus on the skill sets that I saw general contractors struggling with.”
“I found my fit working for general contractors (GCs), letting them deal with homeowners,” he continues. “I saw my value in taking on the components that were outside of the GCs’ normal wheelhouse—especially historic window restoration. I stepped in to do work that no one else in the market was doing. I could troubleshoot, repair double-hung window sashes, do the glazing through full renovation and build windows to match the originals, and that is what I became known for.”
Through the first three years of business, the firm grew to about six employees in a 12,000-square-foot shop. Thompson says his custom work led to more involvement in the architectural community for projects like building custom doors, matching moldings, custom stairs or other specialty features. So the company can still pick up high-profile projects outside of the normal course of events. However, his firm’s reputation and bandwidth began exceeding his shop’s ability to keep up on the back end. That’s when he had the epiphany that he was either going to be that high-skilled carpenter working in the shop or he would need to step back and focus on the operation of his business.
“When Aventine’s leadership approached me about acquiring them, I knew it was the sort of shop that I wanted to be like, and we merged on January 1, 2018. So I thought, if I’m going this route, we need to turn this into something more sustainable; meaning we needed more bandwidth and a location where we could grow. That led to the acquisition of Garland Woodcraft, which closed in June 2018,” he says.
The firm is still operating out of two locations, but a large financing package is in the works for more equipment, and Thompson wants to continue consolidation efforts and give these legacy businesses a new twist. He says “stay tuned” as all these efforts are still underway.
Moving Forward
“We are examining every step of the process,” Thompson says. “While the bulk of our work is commercial millwork, we are still completing legacy, high-end custom projects with custom cabinetry and doing historic preservation work while layering a more corporate system on top that integrates information technology. This will unite our front-end operations with the shop. We also want to invest in a highly automated manufacturing production line.”
Thompson plans to implement the equipment and information technology improvements in the coming year. With the new automation and technology, he hopes to produce in volume while freeing up skilled craftsmen to focus on custom elements.
With the acquisition of Aventine and Garland, Thompson felt the firm could keep up with the projects he was doing, but he knew to make it sustainable, the firm needed to solidify the backbone of commercial millwork. It also needed to refine its production process.
“Our focus is on the custom projects, but a lot of that work involves cutting smaller rectangles out of bigger rectangles,” he explains. “We can let the machines do that to allow us to focus on the more high-end custom components.”
“We believe in the dignity of blue collar work,” he says. “I’d like to take the gains we achieve through consolidation and apply that freed-up bandwidth toward emerging market technologies and an even greater emphasis on craftsmanship.”
Through automation, the team will be enabled to use a more systematic approach. “The human capital is there, and we are motivated,” Thompson says. “Now what I need to bring to the table are the capital resources. Learning how to do that has been a crash course for me. I went from a $5,000 credit card to seeking a $5 million loan. That’s been the most difficult thing I’ve had to navigate; learning the banks and navigating investors.”
Leaving a Legacy
Thompson Millwork’s craftsmanship is evident throughout its region. It has matched existing woodwork to the original architecture across Duke University’s campus. The firm has also done work in the basketball team’s locker rooms as well as in basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski’s office. And it has completed projects at several other universities, such as the University of North Carolina, and NC State University.
“We have great relationships with those institutional clients, who provide us a lot of opportunities to do high-quality work,” he says. “Most recently, we have gotten into some redevelopment efforts in East Durham, where Garland is located. There has been a lot of redevelopment and investment there in the last few years.”
He says Self-Help Credit Union has led the way for the area’s rehabilitation, which has included renovating a church and storefronts. Garland milled all the moldings and doors that were reinstalled in the buildings. Thompson says he really enjoys being a part of the projects and helping to revitalize his own neighborhood.
“Garland’s location itself is a redevelopment opportunity in the long run,” he says. “We’ve got a large project that we’re about to kick off to renovate 12,000 square feet of historic storefronts.” Even though his plan is to ultimately move the company into a bigger facility, he believes this area will benefit from the skills and craftmanship his team will provide. “We can help continue that broader revitalization through what we do here.”
“I want to build more of an institution with this company,” Thompson says. “I want to promote high-quality work while giving the people who are executing it a stake in feeling like they’re a valued part of the process. There should be dignity in doing this kind of work, and I want to give that opportunity to everyone who is involved in the organization.”
That is one of the primary motivating forces moving Thompson Millwork forward, he says. “I want to build a business that employs people who can raise a family and get benefits. That hits close to home, and we’ve been big supporters of the Durham Living Wage Project, which promotes supporting worker livelihoods by urging employers to pay living wages. Being able to extend benefits package to the employees is something I take pride in.”
![Tonie Auer](storyassets/contributors/TonieAuer.jpg)