How To Start Your Own Up-Cycled Furniture Business

Vintage furniture is so popular right now and there are a lot of people out there starting upcycled furniture businesses. It’s a great area to get into because you can pick up good quality furniture at very low prices. It requires a bit of work to get it looking nice, but the overhead is low and the profit margins can be very high. However, there is a lot of competition out there so you will have to work hard if you want to get a vintage furniture business off the ground. If you want to start an upcycled furniture business, here are a few tips to help you beat the competition. 

Know What To Look For 

There are a lot of great pieces of furniture in second-hand stores, but there are also a lot of damaged pieces that can’t be rescued. If you want to make a business out of selling upcycled furniture, you need to be able to tell the difference between the two. When buying wooden furniture, it’s important to see whether the wood itself is in good condition. If you just need to fix cosmetic damage and give it a coat of paint or reupholster it, you can make a good profit. But if the wood is rotted or filled with woodworm, you won’t be able to sell it on. If you want to go down the route of antique furniture, it’s important that you are able to tell the difference between something that is an antique and something that is just old. 

Get A Storage Unit and Workshop Area 

If you are serious about running an upcycled furniture business, it is important that you have a dedicated storage area and workshop. If you are creating this stuff in your shed, the quality will not be as good because you are limited by the space. You could hire somewhere or even consider hiring steel builders to create a prefab building to work in. If you don’t have a good storage area, you will soon end up filling your home with half-finished furniture, so it’s best to keep your home and business separate. 

Choose A Selling Platform 

Once you have some finished furniture, you need to decide how you are going to sell it. It’s always important to have a business website for marketing purposes but, when you are just getting started, it’s not the best way to sell your products. You will have more success if you sell through established platforms, like Etsy or eBay. These sites already have a large customer base so it will be much easier for people to find you. Once you start making a few sales and you invest in your marketing to drive traffic to your website, you can start to think about selling directly through your own site. Selling through your own site will save you money because you don’t need to pay fees to another platform, but it will be difficult to get off the ground without these platforms to start with. 

Upcycled furniture is big business, but there are a lot of other people doing it so competition is fierce. As long as you follow these steps and you create interesting products, you should be able to build a successful business.