Even if your dad's skills are in a specific dying industry, he probably has some transferable skills which others want to learn.
Here's an example: http://www.designdimension.com/projects/cranium-connection-h...
Is that something somebody would pay to learn? I don't know. Maybe.
His (and probably your dad's) problem is that he was still grasping at straws and willing to have the old world order back. He was longing to build custom kitchens that serve more to demonstrate his woodworking skills rather than to appeal to modern taste. He was also (erroneously) considering middle class to be his ideal clientele.
The solution is right there on the surface. You can't compete with IKEA, so don't. You've got unique skill and it can be applied to make unique pieces. For those who do not shop at IKEA and find the quality of "affordable Swedish crap" simply appalling. For people who don't really mind paying 2-5-10x the IKEA prices to get exactly what they want and in quality they want. It's the top of the market, but that's exactly where the demand for high-quality custom work is prevalent.
Also, the focus should really be not on the intricacy of the work, but on quality. The reason being is that the taste of carpenter is not likely to be aligned with the taste of someone needing a piece for his minimalist penthouse loft. The fancier the design, the more it detracts for the quality angle. So if you are to build your dad a portfolio site, make sure to feature either simple, but casual things or something that is clearly there to demonstrate the skill and not the design.
... it may sound like I ramble, which I am, but it was painful to talk to our carpenter and see how helpless and lost he essentially was in modern reality. You are in a position to help your dad, if not with anything else but your understanding how the Internet works and how it can be used for self-promotion. Do it, dude. Stop day-dreaming and build him a simple tasteful site (e.g. square space). Go from there.
And may I say the 5-10x increase in prices is too low - ikea will sell me a compete kitchen for 2000 ukp. If you sell a hand made kitchen for less than 50,000 ukp you are in the wrong place. (Incl labour and the cut to the architect)
There are probably highly paid jobs for doing unique things with wood, but the problem is finding and getting them. The general way is networking. Having a blog would help with getting known.
Maybe an online blog is not the right thing in his world, which is probably "lower-tech". Maybe an email newsletter?
He's huge with the DIY and home projects crowd :)
You're making incredible stuff that will likely last forever, but fundamentally performs the same tasks as something that costs 1/10 as much.
While you can find people who are willing to pay 10x Ikea for your wares, they're few and far between, and aren't likely to be repeat customers if the products are sturdy enough.
I feel for your dad. Unfortunately, skilled artisan labor in the face of mass produced items that work similarly and undercut cost greatly is not the greatest place to be.
While you can find people who are willing to pay 10x Ikea for your wares, they're few and far between, and aren't likely to be repeat customers if the products are sturdy enough.
Again, that falls into the "not even wrong" category. First of all, you sell at 20x-50x Ikea, not 10x. People at that end of the market are socially gregarious, wealthy, often into conspicuous consumption... and they always have friends just like them.
You just have to know where to sell it and how to get work commissioned.
You need to understand that volume is not important but demand is.
There's no doubt that cheaper mass produced goods will replace more expensive manually produced ones. But as techies, we often overestimate the speed at which this change actually happens in the world.
I bet there are thousands of people who really value high quality handmade wooden goods. The internet and mobile tech now makes it easier than ever before to find these people. So, there's probably enough money to be made in selling to these people. There'll also be less competition.
If your furniture is not older than 20 years, I doubt that you have manually produced furniture. Ikea was the pioneer and the rest somehow followed.
Probably almost nothing that you own is hand-made.
It really depends on where you live; some places, people buy things that are more expensive but last forever.
Yes, fundamentally for the first one year. Maybe I am the only one who gets weird feelings when furniture starts to degenerate each time it is in use. Ikea is cheap and good looking, at least for a short amount of time.
If you don't like that, you can buy luxury furniture - or buy the high-priced Ikea stuff that somehow has reasonable prices.
I think hand made stuff is in high demand, as long as it is affordable. AFAIK it's not... for me. :)
Yes. I've suggested the possibility of a business before and I think he believe it's too risky or not lucrative enough. In fact, I've ran into this mindset very often with my family. For instance, I've been trying to convince my wife to sell things online for quite a while. She's convinced now, but for a long time she thought it was total pipe dream.
I do think you should make him a portfolio, though. If he's in the top 1% and willing to travel, he can avoid being a commodity and start doing one-offs for more affluent clients. Those people are few, and they likely aren't where he is, so communication is key.
If his dad knows to carve beautiful things out of blocks of wood, he can probably pick up CAD software quite easily.
[1] http://www.judegomila.com/2012/12/manufacturing-renaissance-...
But, darn, all CAD software seems incredibly tedious to me -- even that which people say is "easy" to learn. It kind of reminds me a lot of every time I try to use IDEs for developing software (I'm the sort of person who likes a good text editor and the unix shell for software development.)
I'm wondering if this represents a valuable insight into what is lacking in existing CAD software, or if it's an just a necessary learning curve I haven't climbed that's inherent to the problem space.
- There's always a faster way to do what you want, but you have to know about it. It seems like every photoshop tutorial I see introduces a new, difficult brush or technique. I guess the only way to be acquainted with these is to spend a ton of time in the software, messing with everything. Essentially, you need to make a career - or life-consuming hobby of it. Otherwise you have a very small set of tools which can do everything, but excruciatingly slowly.
- Artists spend hours doing even simple things, because it's a craft and they want it to be perfect. Programmers are used to knocking out quick iterations and seeing immediate results. I'm not sure if this takes a different sort of mindset, longer attention span, or just a real dedication to what you do. I suspect OP's dad has this mindset, because fine woodworking would be similar in this respect.
I've just accepted that I'm not cut out for art; I take photos, but I don't even have the patience to do post. It's a very foreign mindset to me - it seems tedious, but every choice really does require human interaction, and skilled interaction at that.
I'm under the impression that CAD users learn the scripting language that goes with the software to automate a lot of the tedium. They're also the people who buy those crazy mice with the eight macro buttons and extension ports.
The ingenuity, lateral thinking, and sincere desire to help someone you guys have never even met on display today are just mindblowing.
I would be very very surprised if there's no one who would pay good money to learn that.
http://www.herriottgrace.com/ and http://shop.herriottgrace.com/
HG is product based and what you describe sounds more about creating exhibits and environments. However, there might be similar intentions toward craftsmanship and construction. It does take time and work to set up a shop like HG (site is on Big Cartel), but with the right amount of SEO / Social referrals it is possible to find an audience that cares. Good luck!
My dad is in a similar predicament being, well, a shady dealer in a troubled part of the world. Unfortunately for both him and myself, he doesn't want to leave his "industry" despite the diminishing returns and the risk or prison (he has never been in prison). Even if he wanted to his industry probably wouldn't let him leave.
Posing this from a throwaway account for obvious reasons.
Actually, the biggest problem among my parents is that they don't. My dad makes less than half what I do and he's incredibly knowledgeable, skilled, and hard working (a lot more than I am). If there's one thing I could do for him it'd be finding him a better paying job. But I don't know if there's any app that can fix being in a dying, underpaid industry. Sometimes I daydream about writing him a portfolio site or something, but I have no idea if that would help.