“The genesis of Bartley’s All in Wood was my father, Stanford Bartley, who was just a regular cabinet maker in Jamaican parlance,” Lacey-Ann Bartley, managing director of Bartley’s All in Wood, began as she reflected on a journey that has seen her taking her father’s business from the backyard of the family home in Mandeville, Manchester, developing and growing it to the point where she is now dreaming of taking it public sometime soon on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE).

Bartley said her father’s exposure to cabinet making came from him “learning trade” through being an apprentice to a man in the community called Brother Dennis. For herself, Bartley said she has been in the woodwork business ‘from birth’, saying that while that recollection may sound cliché, her interest was kindled before she knew or understood herself. She recounts days with her father late in the woodwork shop, ‘at about age two’, watching him work as evidence of her long association with the business and close relationship.

Years later while in university, Bartley said she remained close to her father’s business doing everything, “whether I am doing marketing or helping to pack” even though she was working through college at places such as Guardsman and in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor to help finance her way through school.

“At that time it was just Bartley’s Furniture [which produced wooden household items such as chairs, tables, beds and dressers] and Bartley’s Craft [which made various craft items from wood].”

“The Bartley’s All in Wood name came from Zachary Harding and myself brainstorming at the Branson Centre [for Entrepreneurship] while I was there,” Bartley said of the name that the company would eventually come to be called. Bartley was chosen for the Branson Centre for Entrepreneurship after making a pitch that was accepted where she met Harding. “He was invited to the Branson Centre to do a session on marketing…and I was telling him about my vision during the break. I told him that my business’ name is Bartley’s Craft and my father operates Bartley’s Furniture, but I want to open a store called All in Wood, retailing authentic wooden products, just wood and he was like ‘so why not combine the two businesses and call it Bartley’s All in Wood’ and I thought it was a good idea, so I went with it,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

Bartley also name checked people like professor of international business and current Pro-vice chancellor of The University of the West Indies (UWI) Densil Williams, Professor Lou Ann Barclay at the Mona School of Business and Management, lecturer in entrepreneurship at the UWI, Mona Dr Kadamawe K’nife and head of the Jamaica Business Development Centre Valerie Viera as being big influences in her early years, guiding her mind in the right direction to operating a business.

“I was told Jamaica is a nation of samples by Professor Williams and I was determined that that would not be the fate of my father’s business,” she stressed. That, along with experience working outside of the family business, aided her in developing the customer relations which form the foundation of the business’ success.

“So we here at Bartley’s will try to give you individualised service, whether you are buying furniture for your home or a Father’s Day gift from among our wide array of craft items,” she said as she injected a plug ahead of Father’s Day.

However, it was her upskilling at the Branson Centre which she credits with giving her the push to transform the backyard business since 2014.

“[The] Branson Centre was very transformative in the process of helping me to move from just thinking of the business as a mom and pop enterprise to looking at internationalising the business.” She said with Richard Branson, the billionaire head of the British-based Virgin Group, which controls more than 400 companies in various fields, co-signing with her, opened many doors which helped to expose her products to a host of entities including the Fontana Pharmacy chain and the gift shops at Sandals Resorts in Jamaica.

“On the local scene, the National Bakery was really helpful,” Bartley said as she recalled being chosen as one of The Bold One’s by the Gary “Butch’’ Hendrickson-led company in 2014. Under that programme, companies which were chosen received mentorship, support and marketing help from the National Baking Company. At least one, Spur Tree Spices, has listed on the JSE and Bartley says that is her ambition as well.

“That year 2014 is when you met me Dashan and came to the house in Mandeville and interviewed me for your Business Review programme on Television Jamaica,” she reminded as she talked about being one of The Bold One’s.

“Shortly before that, I was working at The University of the West Indies (UWI), and I realised that things were turning for the woodwork business. I couldn’t complete my job at the university in good standing and be true to the salary I was getting, because I was deeply submerged in Bartley’s All in Wood, paying more attention to it than my day job, so I resigned and decided to focus on building this business,” she continued. At that time, she was fresh out of her master’s programme in which she did research on manufacturing in the Caribbean and was still living at the UWI, Mona where she was a resident advisor on Rex Nettleford Hall.

“After the exposure I got, orders were coming in quick and fast,” Bartley began as she expanded on the decision to leave her day job to focus on building out her father’s business into a more formal structure. “The business was growing and showing that it could stand on its own. While it was not giving me the salary that I was getting at the UWI, I started to see the potential even more, and I drafted a plan to grow revenues, but it needed my attention if it was to be executed. We didn’t have enough tools, because at the time we were depending on basic machinery my father had used for years since I was a child to do production. To get more and better tools, I cashed in a life insurance policy I had bought when I was at the university and used the funds to buy a drill press to make woogies,” she said as she held up a piece of paper with coloured assessories for women’s hair to show what a woogie is.

Bartley said after designing the woogies, she registered them at the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) and started producing them. “To make the items we also needed a belt sander. We didn’t have one but we got creative in making them and started to supply Things Jamaica. We employed youths from the community, trained them and got it done.” Still she bemoans the availability of trained labour to do the work.

“Fewer and fewer people are going into trade these days. Agriculture and the industrial arts like metalwork, woodwork and the likes are not seen as sexy these days, but they are viable skills. Not having people who are already trained has been an issue for us, but we train them to get the work done.”

Quality for her, she said, is paramount. Her father is strict when it comes to products bearing his name being of the highest standard. That attention to detail, she said, caused the company to flourish and the backyard no longer had the space to store raw materials, finished products or the staff. The house was looking more like a factory, than a residence. Even additional living space that was being constructed ‘upstairs’ for the family became offices for staff. A new location was desperately needed.

“We were in negotiations with someone to lease some land on which we intended to build a container factory, but the expense was overwhelming and as a young woman, I had no collateral to take a loan to finance the plan except the family home and that was not an option I was going to use. Then I heard about the Jamaica Deaf Village in Manchester having some space and I contacted the manager who initially was reluctant to lease the space.” But with persistence, Bartley said she was successful in getting the entity to change its mind with the promise that she will also employ some of the deaf individuals in the factory, a promise she is strict on keeping.

The business has relocated to that facility for the past three years and has seen its clientele growing. The business exports small amounts of products to Antigua, the Cayman Islands and the United States. More exports are being targeted in other markets.

“We can talk to so many hotels in Jamaica and get into them and no more. Now we want to earn foreign exchange and are looking at other markets in the Caribbean with a tourism base to replicate the model that has worked well for us in Jamaica, that is selling our products mainly through hotel gift shops. We are also looking at direct retail using platforms such as Amazon to move products,” Bartley expounded about the next set of plans to grow the business.

Now she is targeting new investments to purchase more state-of-art machinery to work more efficiently. More staff are also needed especially in sales and marketing and the design and creative areas. She now hires 15 people and apart from the back-office workers, says her five-to 10-year plan calls for 30 additional production staff. This is behind her desire to seek capital. She said it may come in the form of a loan, but expresses aversion to go that route even though she said it may be the path she takes to getting funds needed to grow the business. An initial public offering and listing on the JSE is also being mooted though it is early days yet, and Bartley says doing that is not only a dream of hers, but also of one of her mentors, Gary “Butch” Hendrickson, the chairman of the National Baking Company.

Already structures have been put in place in terms of governance and the like to get the entity ready to approach the market when her advisory board decides the time is right. Now a business coach helps with navigating the market especially throughout the pandemic and the supply chain issues which are affecting businesses across the world.

As she moves forward, Bartley says she is focused on building out a company with a legacy that goes beyond her. Bartley’s All in Wood for her must be a household name.