Danny Torres: Deadwood Revival Design

September 16, 2021

Danny Torres: Deadwood Revival Design

Welcome back to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today, Steve Larosiliere sits down with Danny Torres of Deadwood Revival Design. Danny is a member of the small group of people who have returned to the podcast after featuring on an episode previously, and he is excited to get a chance to catch up with Steve on everything that’s changed since his last appearance.

Deadwood Revival Design started in 2015, and when Steve and Danny spoke last, his business was already gaining momentum. At the time, they already had one shop, and Danny himself had just quit his full-time job as a firefighter to work on his business full time. Although he notes that the relatively open hours of a firefighter would have allowed him to keep that job while working on his wood business he knew that he would not have the necessary drive if that safety net was still there.

“If you want to be able to take over the island, make sure that when you get there you burn the boats. Having that comfortable, cushy job where I knew that the money was coming in, I knew that I was never going to push for my business in the way that I needed to to make it the thing that I wanted to do.”

Danny Torres

Everything Starts with a Vision

Steve wonders what factors brought Danny and Deadwood Revival Design to the point they are at now. Danny believes that the very first thing is to start with a vision. Everything starts with a vision, and you need to have a clear vision for the future to see yourself where you want to be. He adds that you need to define that vision very clearly as well, using the example of tools.

If someone wants to upgrade their shop and their equipment, it’s not simply enough to just say that they want to upgrade their tools. They need to paint a clear picture of what kind of tools they need, what they need the specific tool upgrades for, what products they will be making, and what kind of clients they want to go for.

The next step according to Danny is to translate the visions into goals. He and his partners sit down and do exercises where they think about what it is they want to do and what direction they want to take the company. Then they set goals for the year and review those goals periodically. The final piece of the growth puzzle is his mindset.

“We talked about this before, everything starts with mindset. This industry can be so hard because ultimately any industry like this, where you’re trying to make it creating furniture and doing this and doing that, it can be difficult to maintain it.

So you’ve got to have the vision, you’ve got to write the goals, and you have to have the mindset that leads to resilience. Partnerships are key to success. We are very good at making partnerships of all kinds. And that’s really taken us to the next level.”

Danny Torres

Triple Bottom Line Business

When Steve met with Danny in person at a conference in California, he felt that there was a spark in Danny that spoke of the force within him, and he asks what motivates him to pursue a vision beyond just selling tables.

One of the things that Danny and his partners want to make sure of is that they are able to continue to do what they love and sustain it long-term. One way he likes doing that is by thinking about making bigger impacts than just making furniture. He loves that process enormously, but he also recognizes that it acts as a springboard to allow them to forge lasting partnerships to pursue greater goals.

Deadwood Revival Design believes itself to be a “triple-bottom-line business.” Danny explains that term by saying that most businesses work on a single bottom line, which is exclusively to make a profit. Conversely, DRD focuses on their three P’s; people, planet, profit.

“We’re involved in a lot of environmental stuff. That’s our tree planting, our carbon sequestration, our education. We donate trees with every single purchase, there’s a percentage that goes and so if you buy a table from us, we might plant 200 trees through a donation to a nonprofit, and then we let the customer know about that. We educate them.

We’re into educating people. That’s why we’re developing the urban wood drying course because I think that there’s that need in the market to learn that everything starts at drying. If you don’t have dry lumber, you cannot make beautiful things. The next step is going to be giving people skillsets. I envision that we’re going to create an apprenticeship program that can target disadvantaged communities and low-income communities.”

Danny Torres

The Future is Bright

Deadwood Revival Design, Danny, and his partners have a bright future ahead of them, and he is looking forward to the many plans they have ahead of them. Right out of the gate, he is excited about the Cal Fire grant and the partnership with the Environmental Center of San Luis Obispo, which is a full circle sustainable approach to urban lumber.

This partnership is working to become leaders in the industry that are helping build skills for the community first and foremost. That means they will be coming out with a three-day workshop that focuses on everything involved with drying. Beginning from understanding how lumber behaves, what its qualities are, how to air dry it, how to stack it, all the way to the many different kinds of kiln technologies.

Furthermore, they are going to be teaching people in high schools and colleges as part of this project. Through a partnership with the Cal Poly College of Architecture and Environmental Design, they will be speaking with students about urban lumber as a material, how it’s wasted, what its impacts are, and how it can be used in the building environment.

“We want to target material influencers, designers, architects, and all that stuff. And then we’re teaching the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary students because ultimately, those people are going to be the people making decisions in the future. So we need to educate them so we can get more business and industry and so we can push these environmentally-conscious practices forward.

It’s going to be more capacity, teaching, more connection in the community. We plan on applying for other grants, and just making more impacts in the community. And dude, just partnerships, all this stuff. Ultimately, that’s kind of the plan for growth for the future.”

Danny Torres

Steve’s Advice Corner

In terms of advice for their future, Danny explains that their primary need is to figure out how to penetrate larger markets. He notes that they are doing very well already, but they want to learn how to double or triple their revenue at DRD by getting into markets such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara before pursuing a national market.

Steve notes that paid advertisement helps with expanding local brand awareness, but that developing relationships with architectural and corporate buyers are going to be the most effective way to build on a larger scale. He suggests that Danny scrape a large database of architects, designers, and contractors within his target market, and then mail or email them a brochure or one sheet with a targeted URL.

“Send them to a targeted URL, you can track that. And then you get them there and they see a video of you standing in front showing how you made this and how you can do this for their clients. Show from the tree cutting down to the milling to the finishing to the presenting. Say “I want to do this for you and your clients. Let’s set up a 30-minute call and I can walk you through the process. If you have anything coming up in which you need urban forestry, by the way, I have one of the largest grants in the state of California.”