5 Year History of Roots & Jones
Grandpa teaching me the ways of pen making.
It has been five years since I started making pens. Just saying this aloud makes me astounded. The feeling of committing to something and sticking with it for that amount of time is something that I am extremely proud of. What does it mean to stick with something for 5 years? It means dedication and sacrifice. It means showing up day in and day out to build a foundation. For me it meant mastering a craft and putting in my 10,000 hours learning the nuances of pen making and now building a business around that craft.
Roots & Jones first started by me approaching my grandfather and asking him to make me a pen. And for him to teach me the steps along the way. I did not know when I first asked him to do this it would lead to me becoming a full time pen maker.
I started making pens five years ago. But one could argue the seeds of Roots & Jones had been planted long before then. I was never much of a woodworker, but my grandfather was/and is a master. He didn’t just make pens, he actually was more well known in our family for the infamous wooden toys he’d make my brother, sister, two cousins, and I for Christmas. I’m talking fire trucks, helicopters, Doll Houses, rocking horses, tractors, cranes, tanks, motorcycles, boats, you name it. All made to scale. These were always the best gifts and even at a young age I understood how much time and effort went into making these. They will forever be cherished.
As I grew older I remembered bundles of wooden pens tucked away in drawers around his house and other family members having them. They were sleek and I was always fascinated with them. In the fall of 2018 I was about to start my senior year at the University of Kentucky; it was time for one of grandpa’s pens. I asked my grandpa to teach me the craft and for us to do it together. I immediately became hooked.
My first batch of pens! Now redesigned and improved in our new Founders Collection.
I was going to school in Lexington and would drive back to Louisville on the weekends just to make pens. The first weekend I was probably able to come out with 7 or 8 completed pens. I was so excited, those pens would make me cringe today but they were so special to me at the time.
My grandfather to this date has never sold a pen. He would make them for family members or give them as gifts to friends and people at work. Woodworking was never a business to him, it was a hobby. And to be frank he probably never thought there would be a market for it.
Nonetheless, now that I was making pens I started showing friends, family, and classmates. There was some interest in them. I was invited to do a small Christmas popup at Daily Offerings Coffee shop in Lexington KY. I had maybe 15 pens, a small acrylic stand, a test paper, and maybe a small velvet cover for the pen. I am not even sure I had that.
Our first ever show! Peep the wooden motorcycle.
I sold 4 pens, one for $50 whole dollars and 3 for $120. I was ecstatic. $170 for a college student meant a few weeks of survival. My grandparents and brother made the trip from Louisville to be there with me for that first show. It meant the world to me. After that first taste of selling my craft I became more obsessive than ever. Hooked on bettering my display, expanding my options, and being the best pen maker I could be. I signed up for more shows.
My next one being the early spring of 2019. A 3-day, 10 hours a day event. After selling 4 pens in 3 hours at my last craft show I had high hopes of it being my best show ever. Oh boy was I wrong, I sold nothing. Not a single pen. Nothing. Those may have been the longest 30 hours of my life, as I looked across the aisle to a nearby vendor who consistently had a long line of people buying $8 BBQ sauce. This was what I like to call a “contemplating life” show.
After the show concluded my family and I went out to dinner at a quaint Thai restaurant in Crestwood. A man sitting near our table overheard our conversation at the table and him and I started chatting. The day's events of being at an art show got brought up and he wanted to see the pens. We went out to the parking lot and I opened up my leather binder of pens on the hood of my car. He bought my most expensive pen at the time and wrote me a check for $120. It proved to me that there were people who would support what I am doing, it may just happen in unusual ways.
The first 8 months of my pen making journey was honestly an excuse for me to come home from UK and escape into a hobby. To spend time with my grandpa and work in the shop. In 2019 pen making was still just a hobby of mine. I would maybe sell a pen a month on the website and only make sales in person. I was still in school until May of 2019 where I graduated from UK with a finance degree. I would have loved to have gone straight into making pens as my full time occupation, but as a finance major, there was no way to justify this venture without a little more proof I could sell more than a pen a month. The proof was still another 2 years away.
I want to highlight that this was not a pipe dream. I was very intentional in my actions. From the moment I sold my first pen I knew Roots & Jones would one day be my full time pursuit. However, as is the case with all businesses I needed money and I needed a solid foundation. So I put my very expensive college degree to use and got a big boy job. Procurement Analyst at Beam Suntory. (Owners of Jim Beam, Makers Mark, etc). I learned a lot in my year and a half in this role, and most importantly I got a paycheck every two weeks, something which would have been unlikely for an aspiring 22 year old pen maker.
I used this job to learn, pay off my student loans, and build myself a safety net for whenever I decided to make the leap. Any pen sales I made I would roll all the money back into the business. 2019 and 2020 were foundational years for the business.
The pandemic no doubt played a major role in my business. On one hand it canceled all the art shows I had scheduled for the year. On the other hand, it meant my day job was fully remote. Instead of a commute to downtown Louisville I commuted out to my grandparents house for my workday. This enabled me immediately after work to go make pens for hours on in. I was able to hyper focus on it rather than spend my time commuting and stuck in traffic.
But I still needed to sell. I needed to prove I could actually make this into a sustainable business. (Still trying for what it is worth). With COVID fully present all shows had been canceled for the holidays and I was at a loss for what to do.
Then in early November I was given a lifeline that changed the trajectory of my business and thus my life. Clayton & Crume (My favorite leather goods company) was having a black Friday event at their store and invited me to come setup a booth and participate. It was amazing timing. I did well and I sold around 13 pens in the day and had a blast. As the show was wrapping up, Jose, C&C Retail Director, asked how it went and then said “Do you want to come back next weekend? You are welcome to come any weekend up through the holiday season.”
Clayton & Crume leather goods. Great leather and an even better company.
I will do a more in depth story about Clayton & Crume and their whole team's selfless impact on my business. Lets just say they allowed me to come setup my pens in their store and sell to their customers and did not take a single dime for it. The history of Roots & Jones would be incomplete without the heavy influence of their company. I was able to prove to myself I could sell pens and that people actually wanted to gift them.
In early 2020, I had already begun thinking of my great escape. How do I turn this hobby into a sustainable job? This is when another opportunity presented itself. I was approached by Keeneland to have them sell my pens in their Mercantile store in downtown Lexington. Wholesale, which is now the majority of our business was completely new to me at the time. I immediately jumped on the opportunity and drove to Lexington to meet with the buyer. I gave a pen presentation! They ordered 40 pens, by far the biggest of my life at the time.
Afterwards, I immediately started thinking, if Keeneland feels they can resell these in their store and make profit on them, then other retailers may be interested in doing so. That was in spring of 2021, Keeneland Mercantile, my first retailer. We are now headed into this holiday season with 120.
At this point I crafted a plan and talked it over with my fiancée. I was going to leave Beam Suntory and pursue my passion of handcrafted storytelling full time.I have a vivid memory of being in the wood shop and telling my grandpa. To this day it brings me to tears every time I think or write about it. I was telling him I wanted to take on Roots & Jones full time. In a way that seemed like I was at a crossroads with my life. I was scared. I’m still scared. But what inspired me then keeps me going to this day. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said “You should go for it. If you aren’t going to do it now you never will.” I could tell he was proud of me, even at that point for just getting one retailer and selling a few hundred pens. I had taken it further than he ever could imagine.
The man who never sold a pen in his life; spent 50+ years working and building a blue collar business, gave me his blessing to go for this. That is all I could ever ask for. At that very moment my business, this business, became unfailable. I said it then and I’ll say it until I die, at the end of the day if Roots & Jones turns out to not be a sustainable money making business, at least I got to spend 5 plus years of my life with my grandpa and try to become the best wooden pen maker in the world.
With my grandfather's blessing and my fiancée (now wife) support I quickly put in my notice and left Beam Suntory in the early summer of 2021. From May until November of that year I traveled the country attending shows. I put 35,000 miles on my car in less than a year going to New York, Texas, North Carolina, and anywhere I felt would help get our name out there and find new people to support our business.
Armed with having a wholesale account at Keeneland I hit the google machine and started cold calling and email prospective retailers. It was slow going at first but I was able to get about one every few months. Then I came across Pappy & Company and knew I had to reach out. We spent a few months going back and forth and then they took a chance on me. They ordered 50 pens from us and for us to make them out of their bourbon barrels which once aged the legendary whiskey. They have now reordered 3 times from us and the pens we make for them continue to be a hit on their website.
The first 7 months of being a full time pen maker was hard but it was rewarding. It made me be very intentional in what I was doing and the markets we would attend. After another successful holiday season of selling at C&C in 2021, my wife and I moved to Raleigh NC at the start of 2022. This was for her to attend NC State. I rented a workshop in the outskirts of Raleigh and now had to set up a new manufacturing facility on a whim.
It has been the fastest two years of my life since then. I have hired Tyler Chase, a NCSU graduate with a mechanical engineering degree who has helped streamline our pen making process. I have continued to travel the country attending shows and meeting customers. We have partnered with some amazing organizations and individuals to create custom one of a kind pens.
5 years ago I would have not believed we would have over 120 retail stores around the country carrying our products, have the honor of crafting pens for world renowned organizations like the Supreme Court Historical Society, and now crafting a 150th Anniversary pen for the KY Derby. I am beyond thankful for all our customers who have made this possible. For trusting in us to help make a Christmas, Birthday, Anniversary, and/or Graduation extra special with a meaningful gift.
People say if you do what you love you will never work a day in your life. I have a different take. I love what I do so much I am going to work as hard as I can to preserve and grow it. I have fallen in love with this process. It has made me into the man I am today. The everyday grind, the steps, the broken pens, the terrible shows, the no’s and the yes’s. The people I have met and the people I haven’t yet. In 2021, when I decided to commit fully to Roots & Jones, I wrote this, and it still rings true today.
“Roots & Jones is by no means a side hustle, and it’s not just about the writing instruments, It’s a pursuit to expand on storytelling. Pen-making along with storytelling has become my next journey – one that I’m growing into…
No regrets. Each morning I wake up feeling that this is what I am called to do. My mission is to craft the best pens the world has ever seen, worthy of the best stories anyone can write. More than that, I want to enable a new generation of writers to pick up their pens and begin. We all have a story to write – and the story of Roots & Jones has only begun.”
