Brian Presnell: Indy Urban Hardwood Co.

February 3, 2022

Brian Presnell: Indy Urban Hardwood Co.

Welcome back to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today your host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Brian Presnell from Indy Urban Hardwood Co. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Brian studied at the Herron School of Art and Design and studied furniture and sculpture back in the 90s.

Brian worked in various museum positions, building things and recycling materials for exhibits and developing his understanding of urban wood before the term had been coined. In 2000, the museum he was working at underwent renovations and cleared a load of trees out from the property. Brian then had the idea to bring in a Woodmizer to cut up some logs into usable timber. Now 20 years later, it’s an incredible story.

“They were renovating the building, and when they cut some of these big trees down to make space for a new parking garage, I ran over to the horticultural people and said, ‘Hey, can we recycle the logs?’ And they’re like, ‘What are you talking about?’

Really, the first time I thought there might be a use for this stuff was back then. I was just getting going. I had a studio, I studied furniture design, and so I mean, by virtue of being a starving artist, in a way was how I started finding reclaimed and recycling material.

There was a furniture factory on the east side. And I used to dumpster dive and got maple and cherry and other stuff to make some of my early projects with.”

Brian Presnell

Finding his People

Although Brian got a taste of the potential of reclaimed and urban lumber in 2000, it wasn’t for another 17 years that he could take on a project of his own. While browsing hashtags on Instagram, he started seeing growing numbers of urban lumber businesses, and he started following them.

“I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ Nobody in Indianapolis was doing it in a big way. I mean, there were a few people that would get saws brought onto their properties to chop some wood, but there weren’t a ton of people doing that. When I started cutting in 2017, we were really trying some different things to make it work, and I got enough gumption to call Woodmizer.

I looked up the head of marketing on LinkedIn, and I hit him up. I went and visited with them and had a meeting. And I said, ‘Hey, I really want to do something here in the city.’ And they were receptive. They’re like, ‘that’s cool. What do you need?’ I was like, ‘Well, give me a kiln.’

It was kind of a joke because they didn’t know me, so they said, ‘No, we can’t do all that. But we will try to help you.’ And so they called me a few weeks later, and they were like, ‘Look, we’re gonna do an urban lumber series of videos, and we want to visit with you first, we want you to be episode one.’ Here I am not even a year into this, really, and they want to do a video.”

Brian Presnell

Brian went out on a limb, found the people interested in supporting him, and made his way into a position where they could do so. The attention from the video put him on the front page of the Indy Star, the big paper in Indianapolis. It gave the community an awareness of him that is highly uncommon for artists in that city.

Steve’s Advice Corner

“We’re a regional company; we’re not shipping a lot out. I can build crates and ship everything, but how do we do a better job of reaching out to our designers? There are some people here in the city still doing good work who don’t know about us or haven’t been over here yet. And I’m ready to show what we can do. And then we can start adding the story that this is all recycled and reclaimed; this is the upside. Maybe some of that?”

Brain Presnell

Regarding advice for his business, Steve points out to Brian that his experience working in museums and galleries is perfect for the kind of promotion his company needs. Steve says that Brian should make an event out of the things that make his business special.

“What I would do is pick some times, say once a quarter. Then literally make an event out of opening your kiln. Make an event out of finishing your milling around your process. Then you curate your space as though it’s a gallery and show the process from start to finish.

Then you have art, you have cheese, you have music, you have wine, and you make it an event. After that, you can make some kind of obscene gesture like, maybe everybody gets a charcuterie board.

Then you invite them all. It’ll be like the Indianapolis Urban Designer Collective, and it’ll be like a club. You’ll have all these designers that are either square or they’re hip, and they want to be around cool people. You just said your friends are graffiti artists, and then you get your restaurant friends to cater it so like they’re in it too. Then you make it a marketplace for your brand, your culture.”