My husband and I have been building custom furniture for the past decade.
We started designing and constructing dressers, tables and chairs as a hobby. Everyone loved our work and wanted to buy it. We had trouble fulfilling the orders fast enough. Once we went officially into business, our sales doubled in the first two years and then tripled in the third. We realized that the next step was upgrading and expanding our work space. My husband and I decided to search for a bigger and more industrial space. I hunted all over the city, but there just isn’t a lot of commercial real estate available for rent or sale. Some friends of ours own a property in Northland, which was a little outside of our targeted area. However, they offered to rent us the space in Northland for a low price. My husband and I didn’t debate for long before taking them up on the offer. We signed a ten year lease for the property in Northland. Our lease is going to expire in less than a year. At that point, my husband and I will be financially able to offer a firm price to purchase the building in Northland outright. The owner might not be overly eager to sell, but we hope the generosity of our offer will convince him. We have a great deal of machines and speciality equipment all set up in the building. To move would require everything to be taken apart and hauled to the new location. This would be a huge ordeal and result in a total shut down the factory for a few days, and maybe even an entire week. My husband and I don’t want to deal with a lease of the building for another 10 years. We have enough savings to buy a property.