A Grassroots Epoxy Business Ft. Brad Williams

June 7, 2022

A Grassroots Epoxy Business Ft. Brad Williams

“Hamilton Lee Supply started from Hamilton Lee Designs, one led to another. Hamilton is my youngest son’s first name, and Lee is my eldest son’s middle name. So I wanted to keep it in the family.”

Brad Williams

Welcome to a brand new episode of the Epoxy Business Podcast. Today, your hosts, Steve Larosiliere and Jake Latvala, sit down with Brad Williams from Hamilton Lee Supply. Brad got started on his woodworking journey when a tree fell in his backyard, and he wanted to do some work with it.

“This was back in 2017. The network wasn’t as prominent as it is now, with social media and sawmill operations everywhere. So I got a sawmill, and as a custom home builder, I was taking four to six trees off of every demo lot we were doing. Before long, I had 30 to 40 trees. So started with a sawmill, moved on to epoxy, and just dovetailed from making into supply and working with customers.”

Brad Williams

The Growth of a Business

The popularity of epoxy for use in woodworking started to explode on Instagram not long after Brad became interested in the product in 2017. Since he started with his company, working with epoxy has become 85-90% of his business.

“There’s compatibility there with the epoxy game. You see a lot of finished carpentry and the cabinets that people are doing out there nowadays, and you can see some of those more traditional methods being incorporated. I tell people all the time that the epoxy lets the wood speak for itself; the epoxy is just a role player in it. It’s supporting what would have been firewood or trash and making it something gorgeous to most eyes.”

Brad Williams

Brad describes Hamilton Lee Supply as being born out of the shop in his backyard. He had a sawmill and epoxy, and he was making tables as a part-time gig while working full-time at his day job. Over time, Brad hired some people to work for him, and he slowly started gaining customers, and many of those customers turned into friends.

Teaching and Learning From Those Around You

“I had an opportunity to teach and learn from the people I worked with in different avenues. Most, if not all of them, are our current teammates in the business in Houston and developing up here in the Pacific Northwest. It developed from one thing into another, and that’s where we branded the Craftsman collection.

I didn’t want to dive into the maker space that was already established and steal from that name, so we came up with the Craftsman collection. It’s a group of like-minded individuals doing similar things and who kind of feed off each other and learn from each other, which dovetails right into the supply side.

I can help their businesses grow by controlling a lot of the costs, giving them preferred prices, and giving them access to woods they usually wouldn’t have, like live edge slabs from up here. It’s still under development, but it’s been very rewarding for the team.”