Kwadwo Som-Pimpong started making furniture in 2015 because he bought a house with no furniture and decided to build his own.
A decade later, he runs Crafted Glory, a small-batch luxury furniture brand blending West African artistry with Scandinavian design, while working 10-hour shifts at Eaton as a fabrication supervisor.
In this episode, Chris sits down with Kwadwo to trace the journey from those first end tables built in a garage to a full-scale business.
They cover how Kwadwo manages the constraints of four to five hours in the shop each day, including three strategies he has put in place, a clipboard for tracking time and tasks, using Claude to reflect and connect the dots on the 40-minute drive home, and a networking story from New York that turned one photo on Instagram into a series of interior design projects.
He also walks through the Echoes of the Forest project, two pieces made from trees uprooted by Hurricane Helene, one already installed in Biltmore Forest Town Hall and one headed for Asheville’s historic YMI Cultural Center.
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3 Quick Things from this Episode
- The best tracking system is the one you will actually use. Kwadwo wanted to capture his shop time but kept waiting for the right app. He put a piece of paper in the corner instead, in-time, out-time, what moved. That data tells him how long each piece actually takes, which flows into pricing, which is what determines whether Crafted Glory eventually becomes his only job.
- Scaling from craft to production does not have to mean automating out the soul of the work. What Kwadwo saw at Hellman Chang’s plant in Georgia was a model where every component has a part number, workers scan as they go, and work cells handle everything in its right place, and the handmade element is still there. The craft survived the transition.
- One relationship can make the world of difference. Kwadwo visited a past client in New York, they took a photo of the dining table he built, posted it on Instagram, and a stranger reached out. That conversation led to an interior designer with five active project leads. One meeting that almost did not happen, potentially a full year of work.
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Tweetable Quotes
- “Now I see where I’m spending my time, I see how long each piece takes me. If I know the time, that translates into my pricing. If I get my pricing right, that moves me closer to being free from working another job.”
- “I use AI a lot in helping with organization – Claude specifically. At the end of the day, on my 40-minute drive home, I dictate what happened in the studio, my reflections, the challenges I faced. I love how Claude draws connections and builds on your whole story, your whole journey.”
- “I aspire to have an operation where I still maintain the craft element of what I’m doing, but it is systematized such that I can step away, bring someone in, train them to the documentation, and they can come in and do the same thing that I do.”
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What We Discuss with Kwadwo
- How Kwadwo got into furniture making in 2015 out of necessity, moving into a house with no furniture and discovering he’d rather build his own, and how that organic beginning grew into Crafted Glory
- How his dual engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon gives him the mindset and the resilience to keep working through problems that feel unsolvable
- What he observed visiting Hellman Chang’s manufacturing plant in Georgia, component part numbers, scan systems, work cells, and 5S, and how it changed what scaling from craft to production can look like while keeping the handmade element intact
- How 12 years as a fabrication supervisor at Eaton translated directly into running his own team, applying method sheets and time studies, and building standard operations that let someone else step in and do what he does
- The three strategies he uses to manage four to five hours of shop time per day alongside a 10-hour shift: a clipboard for time tracking, Claude for end-of-day reflection, and deliberate networking that turned one New York visit into a pipeline of interior design projects
- The Echoes of the Forest project, how Hurricane Helene uprooted thousands of trees across Asheville and led to two commissions: a mantle from a fallen walnut tree installed in Biltmore Forest Town Hall, and an outdoor bench headed for the historic YMI Cultural Center
Recommended Resources
- Crafted Glory, small batch luxury handmade furniture brand that crafts sustainable hardwood artistic furniture inspired by West African artistry and Scandanavian design
- Biscuit Head, an incredible biscuit-centric breakfast joint with roots in Asheville, NC
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