A Mammal Grows in Brooklyn: The Inception of a Recession-Fed Wood Shop

What has four arms, four legs, two brains, and a strong affinity for digital table saws? A Brooklyn Mammal, of course. If you are unfamiliar with the organism, that’s because it’s in its infancy. Adam Lesser and Michael Miritello are the creators of Brooklyn Mammal, a wood working shop using locally reclaimed materials and sustainable lumber for their products. The name references the shop’s location (in Red Hook) and is otherwise derived from the rearrangement of their initials. The guys have been working together for over four years in the industry, and think that a time like now – in the middle of a recession – is as good as any to put their entrepreneurial spirit to the test.

For a while now, the guys have been motivated to start their own shop for a variety of reasons. One is that for all their time in the field, they have seen more usable scrap material be thrown out just because the company they worked for didn’t budget for processing time and cost to utilize these leftovers. Another motivating frustration happened earlier this year, when after building an expensive, custom carpentry job based on calculations and decisions made by a higher up, they discovered during the installation that it wasn’t going to work and had to disassemble the entire installation, going at high-end wood with mallets, to rework the cabinetry on site. While this was happening, some veteran woodworkers from another company ribbed them over the mishap, and the guys then realized that if they are going to fumble on something like this, they might as well fumble on their own terms.

The recessionary times has, in fact, enabled and inspired them to some degree to get their effort off the ground. Besides the mounting frustrations of working for others, the ultimate kick-in-the-pants happened: a layoff for one of the guys. The silver lining there is that it has provided the freedom and time to sort out the practicalities of a new business, such as figuring out market research and consulting on small-business “how-to’s” from nationally available resources such as SCORE, in addition to seeking advice from to friends and family who extol the great advantages from starting with a finalized business plan based on their own experiences. “It’s all been constructive criticism,” says Adam of personal advice from others about making the best go of it, “but it hurts to realize how much more you have to do.”

The recession has proven surprisingly helpful in tackling any New Yorker’s bane of existence: finding that perfect location. The guys recently moved into the shop’s new home – the “SoHo loft of wood shops,” as Adam put it – a 15,000 foot shared space made available to them, and reasonably so, by vacancies created by others who haven’t weathered the economic setback so well.

Of course, finding a home is just one part of the start-up’s success. Insurance, market research, and looking for investors are just some of the technical pieces that continue to be sorted out. Yet with all the unglamorous details that bog down any small business initiative, the guys of Brooklyn Mammal are looking forward to putting forth their creative efforts under their own terms. Though they know they have create a competitive product line that will be marketable to a currently cash-strapped audience in an option-filled wonderland like New York City, and that some compromises may have to be made in the short term – “We have to eat,” they explain and using less sustainable materials could be considered if means getting a job –  they can still see their ideas turning into reality. That reality currently lies in a 9-foot high pile of reclaimed lumber from a past Brooklyn Heights brownstone project (pictured above in transit), now sitting in their workspace and waiting to be converted into something new. “We are interested in the back story of what it was originally used for,” says Michael, and the guys intend to create something out of that lumber that can be given back to the donor of the material as a gift, completing a full circle of sorts. With future goals to harvest local and sustainable materials, and ambitions that involve responding to the local needs through their product designs, the guys look towards to calling on their own logic, decisions and creations in leading them into the future of Brooklyn Mammal.

We hope to document the progression of this endeavor as time goes on. In the meantime, see more about Brooklyn Mammal on their website.