In the fall of 2000, Sean moved to Arkansas from Pennsylvania to be with Tamera (who he met online before it was “cool” to meet online). Not long after, he proposed they start making candles for fun and for some extra money. They sold them at craft shows and to fellow employees. In 2004, they decided that making the candles in their home might be too much for their young son and stopped making them.
Around the fall of 2005, Sean decided to start making wood crafts after Tamera paid too much money for a name train for their son at a local craft show. It cost $10 and was nothing more than a little bit of scrap maple. He started researching and making wooden letters, custom signs, and wood cutouts samples using a scroll saw his Dad gifted him.
A week or so later, Sean received news that the sawmill he was working for was going to be shut down. He and 80+ employees at the mill were going to be out of work by December.
While looking for work in January 2006, he started selling his wood crafts on eBay and the new Etsy market to help make ends meet. The scroll broke on the first order he received, and he needed a new one. They spent $100 on a new saw to get the $45 order to the customer. Soon after, more orders started coming in. About three months later, there was an order every day for over a month straight. Things were starting to get busy in the “shop”. The shop was nothing more than a scroll saw on the back porch.
With their son starting school in the fall, they decided it would be best to keep him at home for the summer while Sean worked on growing the business. It was providing them with the money they needed to keep going.
During this time, Sean was researching how to make letters and cutouts more efficiently. He came across a wood carver meant for carving items like duck calls. Then he came across a CNC website, he thought that would be better than the carver and started researching. After making a rudimentary set of plans (there were not any real plans), he purchased parts and started putting everything together. The first machine he built in the summer of 2008 was not very reliable, but it was faster than hand cutting. After a couple of months, he and a neighbor put together a new CNC. This one was much better. At the same time, a crude shop was built to put the business in. Not having enough money to build a proper shop, he “winged” it and learned on his own.
Orders started coming in faster, and the business had doubled in size in the first three years. Now making more than he did at the sawmill, he has been saving money to build a shop and build even better CNC machines. He hired a couple of people to help him out. Around 2011, Tamera decided she had had enough of her corporate job and decided she could help Sean grow their business by bringing in her customer service expertise and craft ideas. Growing over the years, their business now has around 15 to 20 full-time employees and a shop that is about 12,000 square feet.
In 2016 they decided to change the business name to Craft Dealz. It was a much easier name to remember than their previous name, and business grew because of the new name. To date, they have shipped millions of wood craft supplies to over 500,000 loyal customers all over the USA and even some to Canada, Australia, and England.