Like many starting Woodpreneurs, Bardo from XXL Boomstamtafels in the Netherlands began working with urban lumber as a hobby. Around seven years ago, he and his wife began building a house for themselves from scratch. During that time, he was at a friend’s house and saw a live edge table, uncommon in that area. This table made a significant impression on Bardo, and it triggered his journey to find beautiful slabs.
He went around to different wood sellers and inquired about large slabs, and every single place he visited showed him the largest pieces of wood they had, but all of them were cut into straight lumber and didn’t even come close to what he was imagining. After a while, Bardo started visiting sawmills directly in an attempt to track down the slabs he needed. At one of these mills, he saw a massive log in the corner, and when he asked them why they hadn’t milled it yet, they told him that they didn’t have the right saw for the job.
Bardo purchased the log from them and took it home to figure out how to mill it. Once he had purchased a sawmill for, he cut the log open and was amazed at how beautiful the interior was; he describes it as being “like opening a present.” After milling that first log, he began visualizing the interior of every log he encountered, and the desire to continue milling these giant trees took hold of him.
The transition from a hobby to a business came about when the pile of wood on his property became so high he could no longer see his neighbor’s house through his window. Originally, Bardo had a very romanticized idea of milling logs and building live edge tables from home to spend time with his children. Unfortunately, the local government prevented him from operating a commercial business in his residential area. This restriction required him to rent a commercial property to continue working on his passion, which forced him to turn his hobby into a business that would pay for the space required.
Bardo credits his business’s success partially to the free advertising he gets just from acquiring logs in the first place. Since he likes to get huge trees, it requires equally giant cranes, and the process of removing trees creates such a spectacle in town that he gets a lot of publicity right from the start. People often say that he shouldn’t bother getting the massive logs because they are too big, and Bardo acknowledges that he doesn’t sell very many of the wide tables he creates from these trees. Still, by drawing attention to these extreme things, he can then sell something more standard-sized. With XXL in the company name, customers often ask if he sells small pieces, and he always responds by saying, “big trees can always make little slabs.”
Bardo mentions that the biggest challenge he encountered when starting his business was getting comfortable with asking for the right price for his work. He is happy to speak with anyone interested in his designs, but he is adamant about not discounting the labour, talent and processes that goes into his creations. He states that if customers want something cheap, they should go somewhere else.
That being said, he doesn’t like to be unkind to anyone, even those who don’t do business with him. His friendly nature creates a good rapport, and he often gets referrals from customers who talk to their friends about how nice a time they had speaking with Bardo.
If he could restart his business and do things differently, Bardo says that his only regret is missing out on individual logs. Every tree has a story, and while some of the logs he has acquired have caused him a lot of trouble, he wouldn’t change that for anything.
The stories themselves are precious to him, and he says that if this work ever gets boring, he might do something else, but it never gets boring, so he will likely never stop.
Website: https://www.xxlboomstamtafels.nl/
Instagram @xxlboomstamtafels