Our Story
Chris Clemans has been exposed to woodworking since childhood when he spent time in his father’s framing shop and helped with various wood projects at home. After high school, he acquired formal education at the School of American Craftsmen taking classes in both Furniture Design and Construction. His post-college travels brought him to a cabinet shop in Wisconsin where he worked producing cabinetry in an apprentice position with Heartwood Cabinetmakers. The shop used primarily hand tools, and emphasized high quality in its production.
Eventually Chris became Director of Adirondack Woodcraft Camp for children, and in 1987 began to fill his quiet winter hours by building pieces of furniture and small specialty items which were sold in local craft stores and through a Cooperative of Adirondack Craftspeople. He worked in a building on the camp property that had no source of heat, and dated back to the early 1900s. After a short time he started to get requests for bigger projects: a kitchen, a bookcase, a bathroom vanity. He realized that he would need some heat, and fixed up his shop with an old furnace, and some used tools.
In 2000, Chris was busy enough as a part-time cabinetmaker that he needed to focus his full energies on growing his business. He quit his job at the camp, incorporated his first business, Backwoods Fine Woodworking, and hired an assistant. The need to grow and incorporate was the result of the increasing demand, and Backwoods could no longer operate as a side-business if it Chris was going to be able to grow and develop it properly. He faced difficulties in getting the company to that point because he did it with no formal business training and with no outside investment or loans until 2001. His first 13 years in business, all tools and equipment were purchased with cash, and no formal business plan had been in place. He learned about business management through reading and experience, and proved to have a special gift in both design and manufacture of custom cabinetry as well as in developing and maintaining client and employee relationships. The remote location of the shop in Old Forge, NY, in the heart of the Adirondacks, proved to be a challenge in growing the company since there is no postal delivery in the winter, and there are few common carriers that will travel to the area unless they have a full load. Purchase of supplies that were too large to be shipped via UPS was often difficult, and Chris recalls many trips to Utica and Syracuse to pick up goods that the suppliers wouldn’t deliver – driving a pickup truck full of wood, plywood, groceries and other household necessities back from the visits to ‘civilization’. Part of the decision to make Backwoods a full-time career for Chris was acknowledging the need to have help – and he hired Sandy and Hans, both natives of Old Forge, to work with him. Today, they both are as important to the team as Chris is.
Backwoods rapidly established a reputation in the Adirondacks and Syracuse as a high-end custom cabinet shop that provided excellent attention to detail, and great customer service. The more unique the project, the more apt the Backwoods crew was to say ‘yes’. The little crew of 3 soon outgrew their primitive shop in the back woods and built a 5000 square foot shop closer to the town of Old Forge. Radiant floor heat and an indoor bathroom significantly improved working conditions and productivity, and by 2003, there was too much work for the threesome.
During its heyday, Backwoods Fine Woodworking employed 7 people who were still facing supply issues, and had really outgrown the new shop. The shop floor was crowded and couldn’t support more equipment or people, and there was a growing backlog of work to be completed. Analysis of the production process identified the most inefficient part of the operation as the production of the pieces of material that will make up the carcasses or boxes of the cabinets. Chris considered the possibility of adding additional shifts to increase productivity, and eventually decided to expand the operation into Syracuse to allow access to a larger geographic area and improve options for delivery of materials. By that time, Carolyn had become involved in the business operations of Backwoods as a sideline to her full-time job as Nurse-Practitioner and Midwife. The prospect of buying a building, filling it with new equipment and new staff and creating a new niche presented the Clemans’ with enough logistics challenges that it was necessary to create an incredibly detailed business plan and seek out sources of financing. The business plan took over 6 months to complete. During that time, they set out to find the perfect space to locate the new business, which was named CabFab. By the time the business plan was completed and presented to bankers and other folks in the Economic Development community in Syracuse, Carolyn knew that if this was going to work, she’d need to become involved full time as well because Chris just couldn’t do it all alone. So she quit her cushy job with benefits and job security and jumped into the family business head first.
For reasons too complicated to get into here, CabFab was developed as a separate business that would work in cooperation with Backwoods Fine Woodworking in Old Forge. The shop in Old Forge sent construction of their cabinet boxes to CabFab, relieving the crew of the tedium involved in that production. By eliminating this part of the cabinet production, the same crew was able to produce more custom cabinetry at a faster rate, thus solving the issue of how to increase productivity. This plan allowed increased space and man-hours in the Old Forge facility to be dedicated to the creation of the handcrafted cabinetry that the clients expect, while integration of new ‘screen to machine’ technology in Syracuse yielded a tremendous increase in efficiency and productivity with no compromise to the quality of the finished product.
In 2005, CabFab purchased and renovated an 1896 brass foundry building in a decaying neighborhood of Syracuse. Based largely upon Chris’ ability to vision renovation of the space, and a belief in the quality of the product and production team, an enormous clean-up, re-tooling and outfitting of the space was undertaken, and in May 2005, the first California Closet parts rolled off the CNC router. For much of the next 3 years, those parts were made and sold to various California Closets franchises, which kept the Syracuse crew busy while the CabFab name was established, and enough cabinetry work could be generated to keep the machines busy cutting cabinet parts. In October 2005, the showroom opened featuring displays of 6 CabFab/ Backwoods cabinetry projects, and a separate space rented to California Closets demonstrating their product.
Backwoods Fine Woodworking had defined a unique niche in the market by providing both a superior product and efficient customer-service that left clients impressed with the process of working with the company from design through construction and installation. Professionals including architects, designers, and contractors who worked with Backwoods consistently remarked how refreshing it was to have someone deliver what they promised on time. It was through attention to detail that the company had distinguished itself apart from competitors, and CabFab set out to continue to operate with that as its’ core mission - intending to maintain the same standards of quality and customer service that Backwoods had become known for.
Chris Clemans had proven himself to be a successful cabinetmaker, designer and businessman. As a team, both Clemans established themselves as caring and creative employers. There is an overall feeling among the shop employees that they are part of a team, and they feel that their contributions and input are all valued and critical to the operation of the company. Sandy and Hans, the two first shop employees, were encouraged to develop their respective areas of strength, which has allowed Chris to focus more on development of the company and allowed Sandy and Hans to feel a sense of empowerment as they became increasingly proficient in their respective areas. There has been a great effort made to be sure that the employees feel their work is valued and that they are well rewarded for what they do. The Clemans’ felt it imperative that the employees have access to health insurance and retirement benefits in order to be secure, and instituted plans for both during 2003. They are serious about the responsibility they feel for staff, particularly in Old Forge since the business is one of the few year-round employers in an area that is plagued by unemployment and lack of work opportunity in all but the seasonal job.
A few fortuitous connections provided long-term commercial work for both shops as CabFab continued to grow its name and reputation in Syracuse, and once the initial work was completed for these clients, they returned over and over again, asking us to do more work, often quite specialized. We always got it finished on time and within the budget they had outlined with us, which has allowed CabFab to live up to its mission thus far.
In the end of 2007, we combined Backwoods and CabFab – leaving both shops still functional, but eliminating the operation of 2 separate businesses. Things continue to thrive, even in this tenuous economic time – Chris has recently returned to the shop floor and is actively working on and overseeing production of one of a kind fine furniture pieces. We are introducing a line of custom cabinetry, CabFab Select, that will be a little less expensive that a full blown custom job but still feature all the things that make us special – custom fit and design for the space that a client is outfitting. We feel that CabFab is still young, but we have great optimism that we can continue along the path started over 20 years ago by Chris – and just keep growing our reputation as fine cabinetmakers and now furniture makers as well.