Ten Years Later with Wood Artist Jack Hazenstab
by Bernadette Finnerty
or a runner, there’s nothing like a long run to clear your head and put things into perspective. Jack Hazenstab of Wishfulwoods, based in Altoona, Pa., knows the mind-clearing benefits of a runner’s high. In fact, he remembers the day, while running along the open roads of Central Pennsylvania, when he figured out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
Hazenstab was tired of his corporate job of selling commercial copy machines for Xerox, and traveling all over the country to do it. He wanted a simpler life, and he and his wife, Karen, were attempting to make it happen with a fledgling furniture business. “We were struggling,” says Hazenstab. “There were well known furniture makers in this area who made beautiful things, and we just couldn’t seem to break in.”
Jack and Karen Hazenstab shown while visiting one of the retailers who regularly buys their work. One day, the answer came to him. “I was running and looking at the trees and started to think about inlays, particularly cedar into maple,” Hazenstab recalls. “I came home and started to fool around with the concept.”
A sample of the boxes created by Wishful Woods. It took several prototypes, but eventually Hazenstab came up with a design and technique that worked: a small maple box with a simple inlaid piece of cedar. He started to bring the boxes to his furniture shows. People were interested right away. He knew he was onto something, but he also realized that the boxes were labor intensive and expensive; and there might not be a huge market for them.
That’s when a screen printer the Hazenstabs met at a craft show suggested they screen print their designs onto the small boxes, instead of inlaying each one. After learning the technique, the Hazenstabs developed a marketable product that is reasonably priced. They haven’t looked back since.
With Jack Hazenstab crafting the boxes, and both husband and wife doing the screen-printing, they started marketing and selling their new product. Their handmade playing card boxes, and card game accessories like scoreboards and trump markers, were well received at the Buyers Market of American Craft, which was held in Boston and Philadelphia at that time. “We did pretty well,” says Hazenstab. “We would get small orders, but our accounts would always re-order.”
They also placed ads in The Crafts Report and other craft-related publications. Hazenstab says the accounts he got from the ads he placed in The Crafts Report in 1994 are still doing business with him, 10 years later.
Close-up of a handmade playing card box. Throughout the 1990s, the Hazenstabs advertised and exhibited in trade shows. By 1997, the business had grown to six employees. But once again, Jack Hazenstab started to feel burned out. Time cards, payroll and scheduling other people were not what he’d had in mind when he decided to leave Xerox.
“We knew we wanted to scale back,” says Hazenstab. “We had great people working for us, and we liked them very much. We never laid anyone off, but as each of our employees left for better jobs, we scaled back more and more.” The couple also decided to cut out the wholesale shows, but keep the accounts they had established through advertising, and other accounts they had gotten through word of mouth. “Ninety percent of our business today is from customers we got through ads we placed 10 years ago,” Hazenstab says.
Today, Hazenstab is proud of the laid-back, self-sustaining and creative lifestyle he and his wife have made. Their 120-acre forested property sits on the side of a mountain. They harvest wood from their own land to make the boxes, as well as to heat their home and studio. The amount of wood they cut each year keeps the forest healthy and growing.
Avid gardeners, the Hazenstabs grow a lot of their own food, which is mostly fruit and vegetables. The couple enjoys hiking, biking and jogging, and spending time with their children and grandchildren, who live nearby. “We’re not getting rich, but we make and sell enough product to provide for our lifestyle, doing the things we’ve always wanted to do,” says Hazenstab.Bernadette Finnerty is a contributing editor to The Crafts Report.
