We recently connected with Kelly Wohlgenant and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kelly, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
Honestly? Some of my drive stemmed from an unhealthy self worth and trying to prove to myself that I am valuable. Living my dream has not been an easy path.
When I graduated from North Carolina State University in Industrial Design, I thought I was going to start a product design career. My graduation was in December of 2001 shortly after the trade towers were hit on 9/11. The stock market crashed and so did my job prospects. My fellow students were all asking each other at graduation if we had any job leads. No one did. At the time, I did not realize how usual this situation was. I thought to myself perhaps a change of place would help the matter, so I moved to Florida to be with my boyfriend. I found myself working at the Disney theme parks as a face painting artist. It was a great job, but not exactly what I had envisioned for my career path. So I decided to go back to school this time in business and started a research career. I realized that I wasn’t really living my truth and a fire ignited a drive to purse my dreams in my mid thirties. I really started feeling like life is short and it was now or never to make my dreams happen!
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I own a boutique furniture studio and workshop in Raleigh, NC. We specialize in customizable handmade and original mid century modern pieces. We are a place for design lovers to shop that won’t break the bank! We strive to be more down to earth and affordable than other modern furniture stores. Although we sell a few mass produced pieces, we pride ourselves in offering an alternative to mass market furniture where you can find authentic vintage or locally made pieces and many of them made by my team and I in our on-site workshop. I truly want people to furnish their homes in a more socially responsible way. Clients love that they can have a small hand in creating their own furniture by selecting the dimensions and finishes! Plus sometimes it is tough to find the piece that will fit your space so when customers come to us they know we can create something that will work. What’s new? Our classic solid wood butcher block tables that we have been selling since 2016 are now offered in a pill-shape! We are excited to add more round and curved pieces to our repertoire!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Stamina: Some people call me stubborn, but I am someone who is addicted to problem solving and keep trying no matter what. Furniture retail is a tough business and it can take time to generate income in this industry. It took a year for our butcher block tables to start selling from when I initially introduced them to the store.
2. Flexibility: When you are an entrepreneur, the environment can change at any moment! Maybe a competitor opens up next door who has a better selection, maybe your most skilled employee leaves without much notice, maybe your material prices start going up, or maybe a world pandemic hits! You need to be open to change your path quickly if what you are doing is no longer working.
3. Creativity: In order to change your path you have to think of creative solutions for how to fit into your changing environment. When the pandemic hit, people starting working from home overnight and everyone wanted a desk! We made desks out of anything and every piece of material we had in our workshop as quickly as we could. I am constantly tweaking our private label furniture offerings as styles and our clients needs change. I absolutely love the challenge! It’s definitely one of the most fun parts of my business.
Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
I definitely believe working with your strengths and knowing your weaknesses is very important. I’m so happy we are all different so we can support each other with our unique skillsets. I have a tendency to try to do everything and it’s great to get help when you can. I know that my strengths are creativity, product development and customer service. I am better at getting to know customers, working with them individually to meet their needs. I am not so great at organizing and standardizing procedures. Instead of growing my business further, I have decided to maintain it’s smaller scale because I know it better plays into my strengths.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://retromodern.shop/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/retromodernfurnishings/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RetroModernFurniture/about
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-wohlgenant-8a53aab/
Image Credits
Retro Modern Furnishings, Hannah Spector
