Recently we were lucky enough to have a magical experience down in Stafford Springs, CT at the one and only Orchard Works, a place where they hand craft wands inspired by the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!
Walking in makes you feel as though you have just arrived at Ollivander’s shop in Diagon Alley. When we arrived, we were greeted by Ed Bareiss, co-owner and founder, where he treated us to a sit-down interview, a tour of the shop, and a behind the scenes look at how the magic is created.
Orchard Works:
Website: https://orchardworksct.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OrchardWorks/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orchardworks/?hl=en
Recently we were lucky enough to have a magical experience down in Stafford Springs, CT at the one and only Orchard Works, a place where they hand craft wands inspired by the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!
Walking in makes you feel as though you have just arrived at Ollivander’s shop in Diagon Alley. When we arrived, we were greeted by Ed Bareiss, co-owner and founder, where he treated us to a sit-down interview, a tour of the shop, and a behind the scenes look at how the magic is created.
Orchard Works:
Website: https://orchardworksct.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OrchardWorks/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orchardworks/?hl=en
What is up everybody and welcome back to an episode of Dorkside Nexus. I am super excited today. I am Corey, and we have Brooksie Papa Palpatine. And we are here with a very special guest. From orchard works wands, we have Ed Bryce, say hello, Ed. Hello there.
Brooksie:Hi, love. You started off to a good start.
Ed:Welcome to the bustling metropolis of Stafford Springs, Connecticut. All right. So we are here on location at probably one of the coolest places I have been in a very long time. Tanner and Ari have ordered a couple of products from you guys. And they haven't been able to stop talking about them. So here we are. Want magic wands? This is where the magic happens. This is where the magic happens. You are correct, sir. Fantastic. So why magic one? Why magic Wands? Well, why not? Magic wands to make sense. Exactly. We have been doing this for close to 12 years as May 2011. We started and my little girl the question everybody's going to ask how did you get started doing this? My little girl who is now almost legal drink, had her ninth birthday party and wanted to have Harry Potter ones at the party. And you don't tell you a little girl? No, you can't have magic wands. And even if you've never made one before, you just go in the basement and you know, grab a piece of wood, let's make a magic wand. And, and it turned out to be really easy to do. And we made a bunch of errands. You got to sell these online. Have you heard of Etsy, and we had never heard of Etsy or anything like that. And but we had been at the time looking for a home gig that we do. And it was the perfect thing for my wife. She was unhappy with her work situation at the time. So it was great for us to find a thing that we could make at home. And we set out we sell all over the world. And it's just been growing and growing until it got really too big for the house. And here we are and we have our own store now. It's fantastic. I love the shop. By the way, it's absolutely
Brooksie:it feels feels like I'm like right in all of Andrews shop that you walk right in and have just like a whole new whole new reality change. And it's awesome. The atmosphere in here is incredible.
Ed:Excellent. I'm really glad you guys are able to make the trip down. Like I say we make everything here completely hand shaped and finished. 150 different kinds of wood that we use. Everything is done right here in these four walls. That's awesome. Fantastic. Yeah, it's just it's got this field a moment you walk in, there's the Harry Potter music playing over the speakers and it just sets its ambiance feel of, you know, you're in the magic. So you said you had about eight or nine people who were on the staff here. Currently, we have nine staff plus my wife and myself. Yeah. And it's like two years ago, it was just the two of us and, and a couple of people who kind of came in here and there. So they're still with us. And it's, it's been great to actually grow the business. And you do that by hiring people and having hiring really talented artists is it's we're very fortunate to have found the people we have, but also to know that we're, you know, taking people with artistic talent, and they're using their talents, they're, you know, most of the people work there actually aren't like degreed artists from different colleges. So they are, you know, they don't have to get a job at McDonald's or Starbucks or something they can have, you know, a job doing something that they are passionate about, day in and day out. So it's really fun that comes across in the finished product because each one has this unique feel to it, you know, from the from the design of the one to the to the paint job on it to the finish and they each feel like you know, it's something special, it's something really magical is that are the ones actually magic or that is one of my favorite questions as I really is one of my favorite questions because I love answering it. The the the equivalency I give is to musical instruments. Okay, I say these, these magical ones. These are magical instruments. Well, if I take the finest violin or flute or guitar, piano, whatever, and I set it in the corner on the table wherever on the shelf, it doesn't make a note of music. It only makes beautiful music when it's in the right hand. means someone who's skilled who practices and they can use that musical instrument to make beautiful music. Well, with a magical instrument in the right hands, the right person with the right skill who practices, they can make beautiful magic with these magical instruments. I love that
Brooksie:it's almost it's almost as if like what all of Anders said like the one chooses the wizard.
Ed:It, it is, you know, people will ask very often they come in, you get a wide range of reactions, people walking in the door, some of them are, it's the first day they've ever even known we'd exist, they just found out we existed, they were surprised on the way here, other people have driven here from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Maine, wherever, and they have been looking forward to this for months. So that is the reactions are different. And you get people who will? How will I know? You know? Which one's mine? How do you get the question like do ask, you know, are they real? Are they magic and get the magics all inside you? So you get people who ask, you know, how will I know which one's mine. And it's always super fun to watch that process, because we see it more at shows where we get a lot of people out of traffic walking up to a table where we have, you know, three 400 wands laid out. And you'll see you know, with that many ones out like some people just get overwhelmed and they can't handle it. And others will pick up a wand and go this is mine right now, boom, done. They're there, they're done just like that. And others will will be in between and they'll pick one up and they'll know I like that one of the put it aside and pick another one up and put it aside. And then like, again, it's a big table, and then someone will come up, someone else will come up and pick up the one that they had already picked up and put aside. And you see it in their eyes, they're like, they just picked up my wand. I can't, I can't let them do this. And as soon as that person puts it down, they will run back over and grab it. And that's their one, they won't put it down the rest of the day. I love it. We were just in the showroom. And I was looking around through all the different ones and it's like, oh, not quite and then the one I'm holding it right now it just kind of jumped out and speaks to you, you can tell just from the craftsmanship that you guys put a lot of love and a lot of effort into these that comes across, we definitely dry that's that's one of the things we we try to tout to everybody is completely handmade, hand shaped, and finished the wand is in our hands, on a percent of the time not even we don't use a lathe, there's there's no lathe in the building anywhere, everything's all hand shaped the wand is, you know, from start to finish in somebody's hands being shaped or finished her or whatever. Now, have you had any, any companies or anything reach out to try and get you guys to franchise and get bigger? Or are we originally when we started this back in 2011, we had half an idea that we would sell the company within two years, like we would build the name up and then sell it and on to the next thing. And that never happened. But that's okay. We like the idea of, you know, kind of growing ourselves. And, you know, investing in ourselves, every time things get slow, we come up with a new idea, you know, maybe we'll go into antiques, maybe we'll go into, you know, adding crystals to the wands, those kinds of things. It always stops because the business, you gotta have downs to have ups. So we hit those downs, then you immediately right back up to an up and then somebody asks for 500 ones, you know, for a summer camp or something. And it's like, what those ideas but the antiques aside, but the crystals aside, back to making magic ones, as many as we can as fast as we can. So the business, it's all over the place. You know, it's it's a lot of fun, but it's it's constant. And it's constantly changing. I love your attitude about it. Honestly, it feels like you can tell you love it. You love doing this, you are in my early retirement plan. I'm telling you that right now I am an aerospace engineer by trade have been in the industry since 96. So what's that 26 years, and I can't wait to get out of it because it's a stressful environment. But at the same time, I can't wait to just get here and have my full time job be in this room. And, you know, a couple more years of college to pay for and I can run the numbers. I'm ready to go. Yeah. So you know, currently the plan is, you know, Mark may hold me to this. My plan is to retire at 52. And, you know, enjoy life because retiring at 70 where I've watched a lot of colleagues do that. And then you know, they get a couple of years of retirement and they're in our it already hurts, so to speak, you know, they their body is already you know, kind of failing them so to speak. So I want to travel I've my wife and I want to go do other stuff. You mentioned like franchising and I completely apologize that I never answered that question. We are at Extra actually waiting till about them to open a new location. So that is one of our big plans is to open another location. You know, I mentioned the bustling metropolis of Stafford Springs, Connecticut, and we have 10,000 11,000 people in town. You know, Main Street is literally two blocks long don't blink you'll miss it. It's it's not. It's not a mecca. You know, it's not, you know, Hudson, New York gets a lot of people Woodstock, Connecticut gets a lot of people. Avon, Connecticut gets a lot of people. Even some of the other small dents Colchester, Simsbury. You know, we're in the woods here. It's we know it. We love it here. I've been in this town for 24 years. So this is where we wanted to stay here, especially with my kids and everything. So this is where we were going to establish ourselves but we are definitely looking to go to Philly is really high on our list we've been down to Philly for we went to Fan Expo Philly earlier this year, and my wife fell in love with the city, she went back on vacation a few weeks ago and loves it. So she's really looking forward to maybe making that be the like our next destination. But it could be Chicago could be Orlando could be like DC area. Atlanta, who knows.
Brooksie:So have you thought about going anywhere like internationally like specifically like the UK.
Ed:To set up a show or to set up a store,
Brooksie:I'm gonna say a show,
Ed:we are going to look more and more with this is the first year we've done traveling shows to involve airfare, we driven to shows. I think the furthest we ever drove was Maryland. And it's, it's fun, it's limiting because you know, you want to like our main vehicle for stuff like that as a press. So you know, you can pack a couple tables and you know, a few 100 ones in a bin. And you can make a nice show. We did Orlando this year LeakyCon Orlando, which is like the biggest Harry Potter convention in the world. And you know, flying down, you're limited further to just suitcases, and you know, and plus you have a ton of expense that comes with it. So, you know, we're looking at all of those options. I would love to get into, you know, the big San Diego Comic Con, I would love to get into some stuff out in Chicago, and Seattle, LA, all those those big events down there, out there, we're going to do Denver, that's going to be our next light trip. LeakyCon goes, they're doing two shows this year. So they did Orlando, now they do in Denver. So we'll be out there for that one, the Denver's a lot more affordable to fly to. So we're hoping that's, you know, we're anticipating a smaller show. So really, it comes down to the numbers, you've got to factor in, you know, I have to factor all this. And as the owner of you know, I've got labor to pay, I've got insurance costs any wherever we go, we have to, you know, cover our own liability insurance at those events. I've got the airfare I've got the you know, the rental car or Uber or, you know, I got the hotel or you know, maybe we know somebody we can stay with. But, you know, for the most part, you've got to factor all that in plus cost of goods, shipping anything we're going to ship it's all got to be factored in there. And if the numbers are right, we are positioning ourselves to go do all those events. Yeah, yeah, that's,
Brooksie:that's awesome. Have you been to any of the castles? So that's aldwick lock our cake. I'm think I'm saying this right. cloche? I, golly, and Glencoe. And those are castles. And those are those are some of the castles that are in the UK and I I'm going to say Europe that are in the Harry Potter, Harry Potter movies, excuse me.
Ed:I have spent about six hours in England, all of which was spent in Heathrow at the United or Virgin Atlantic or United or British Airways or Virgin business class lounge, because I had to I got sent on a mission to go investigate an airplane had a problem in in Egypt and they got the engines to Air France and in in Paris. And I literally spent 24 hours on the ground in Paris and so the Heathrow stop was just on either end of that. I've never been to England other than that unfortunate I've been to Spain bunch times. But yeah, that's pretty much the extent of my my European travels a lot of Singapore a lot of Tokyo and in a lot of spam. So no have not been to those cat they sound lovely.
Brooksie:I that's just the name some of the names of the like Hogsmeade Hogwarts Assal. Now, do you use any, like any exotic wood type. So
Ed:we have 150 Different kinds of wood. And we definitely try to stock the most exotic stuff that you can get. So like, we always, quote, The rarest wood in the world is a wood called snake wood only grows in one tiny little South American country just off the north border of Brazil called Suriname, you can't get it anywhere, it grows tiny little trees, it's been completely harvested into almost extinction. It's extremely fragile. It's a strong, dense wood, but it cracks too breezy, it's so strong, it actually has enough residual stresses and material science coming through sorry, it cracks like crazy, you almost cannot make a piece ever without having to glue the snot out of it, to stabilize all the defects that are in it. So that's probably the most exotic, we have a lot of it here I found one. One of the things you have to do in any kind of small business is take chances. And we've taken a lot of them with this building we're sitting in is one of them, it's male, most of the time, I will say our chances that we take are those big risks have paid off, we've taken a few of them totally flopped, I can, we won't talk about them. The exotic woods stuff, we had a supplier show up, like on eBay of all things, offering ridiculously good rates for snakewood like big chunks of snakewood that you just don't see for me 6070 bucks apiece. And I'd like if this pays off, like this is 1000s of dollars worth of magic wands that we're gonna get for a couple 100 bucks. And I bought like six eight pieces of it. And it all worked out, I'll beautiful. So some of its like horrifically cracked, I'm dreading ever cutting into it. But when I finally do, like, I know what I'll I know what to expect, there'll be some cracks, and we'll fix it. But that that kind of thing. That's, you know, getting the exotic woods, but also getting them at the right price, because I could just go buy snakewood if you want snakewood and go buy snakewood and then I could not make any money at it, because I am not going to charge somebody$200 $300 for one. So what this goes into another discussion, we'll come back to the exotic woods, I pride this business on operating on a principle of three V's volume, you can see the inventory in the shop and on the you know, on the shelf here to go to our other customers, the volume, the variety, all that 150 Different kinds of wood, all the different colors and characters themes, you know, Zodiac wands, or the pride series or the different characters from Nightmare Before Christmas, and all that stuff. And then the third V is value, I am not going to charge 200 $300 one, and I have a lot of competitors that do and great for them, you know, they might sell, you know, 1/100 of the ones that we make. But one of the things that are currency here is not necessarily money to happiness, I tell people, I want you to be happy more than I want your money. And to have the smiling faces and the parents that are willing to gleefully hand you their money. Anybody can sit and just take money he can I can hire anybody for 15 bucks an hour to just sit and take money, but to have people walk up and go, you know that that meme of fry my money, my money, to facilitate to manifest that to actualize that in person for you know, the point where you're limited and how fast you can have, you can take $20 bills out of somebody's out of people's hands. That's that's the magic for us that keeps this business going. And people ask, Well, how do you keep a magic wand shop going? Well, that's that those three V's are how we do it. We make people happy with a huge variety, huge volume and a good value that makes them happy. They come in here and like oh, I got a gift. That's something special handmade. And I only spent 20 bucks on it. Cool. Great. I'm happy. I'm happy. You're happy. They're happy. Everybody's happy. Who wouldn't want that?
Brooksie:Yeah. No, that's, that's a good way to think about it. Yeah.
Ed:So the exotic woods again, we were sitting next to a big rack of woods here. Some of that is like boring. The most boring stuff you could get. You can go to our home, you can go to Home Depot and buy poplar, pine. Oak, stuff like that. The this handwritten label here bought a rose. That's a very rare Madagascar rosewood. That is so rare. It's on the list of woods that I'm not allowed to sell it outside the US. If I make something out of it. I am not allowed to sell it outside the US. Oh, black and white Ebony's same thing Brazilian tulip wood. There's a lot of them here that I'm there in that same kind of regime, the guaiac and that's one of the very, very rarest words their smell. Like chocolate when you start working at it's the most amazing stuff. Interesting. Yeah. Maybe after. After we're done here I'll show you what some of the there's there's like three or four woods that are just like the most amazing smells tan Bodi cedar of Lebanon. And the two lignum vitae. These are the most amazing stuff. The Argentinian like the invitee down here is the green stuff. It's, it has a much different smell, but it's it's they call them both light and inviting. That's awesome. Now you're talking about things that you can't do can't sell certain kinds of woods and wants outside of the US. Big companies like Disney and Warner Brothers especially Have you had any pushback with selling Harry Potter inspired merchandise, they, they are ridiculously protective of their name, and we dance around it a lot. I think if they if we were bigger, we'd probably potentially have a concern with that. We're pretty small. What has happened is when you use the Etsy platform, Etsy takes IP, intellectual property infringement claims, I will say they take them seriously. But they also take them too seriously. If I can tell you this, not from experience, but because I just know how the system works. If I wanted to get a competitor kicked off of Etsy, it would take me about a week to do it, at most. And I won't necessarily go into the details here, I will certainly share them with you off air. But unless you really want them I could go into the details. But it would take me about a week to get literally anybody kicked off at sea if I wanted to. That's how easy they make it. They the system basically is that, that they operate under is if anybody complains, they will take the listing down. And then you have to get the complaining party to agree in writing that you can put the listing back up. Well, if I'm the complaining party, what motivation do I have to even read your email, let alone answer to it. It's absurd. And if there's a better way to do it, then you know, maybe one of your listeners can, you know, cue me in I'd love to get some help getting back on Etsy, because we know we probably made I think we did $375,000 in sales on Etsy. And, yeah, and we're off the platform entirely now. Because they kicked us off because they got enough IP complaints. And it was like we took away all the words, we took everything out. You know, I think we had some keywords in the search, you know, because you can you can have your you have your text, and your pictures and your title. And then you have the keywords and the more those line up, the more relevant you are in an Etsy search. And we had everything out of all the words including like disclaimers in there like we are not associated with Warner Brothers, we are not you know all all rights restricted by are held by Jkr and Warner Brothers, universal entertainment, everybody. And they still, you know, hook us all down. So that's, I can't argue with it. I've got enough work with our wholesale business and our own website and just kind of you know, personally with my day job, and then everything I do here to you know, keep the machines running and keep the wood coming in the door and you know, shipping boxes, everything I have to handle ordering all that stuff. Small business is awesome. It's not even worth it to me to at this point to really pursue it because I just I could spend hours and hours on it or I could just let it go and not have the negativity cloud my head and just go do fun stuff instead of in terms of negativity. Do you ever have those days where you walk in? You're like I'm sick, a Harry Potter. Oh, I will tell you the music in the store. You can tell when people have heard the soundtrack enough because it plays probably three four times during a shift. They're open or open where we are open from 10 to five, Tuesday through Sunday. And you that the soundtrack gets old people. After a few days. One of the girls is like I'm hearing it in my sleep we have to play something. So like yes, let's play something else. So we have got like Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky and Beethoven sonnets that we'll we'll play instead. The music is probably the biggest aggravator we do so little that is like actually Harry Potter. You know, if you look around here, there's the four houses up there. There's two different sets of quote unquote house swans that we make. They're just, you know, I mean, I'm allowed to paint something red and gold. I'm allowed to paint something green and silver. It's I'm not calling it a slithering wand. It's you can call it a slither and want use Oh look, it's Griffin door collars or Ravenclaw collars. Well. The color blue exists elsewhere. I don't have to just not use it in the like the Deathly Hallows that that's a symbol that the triangle with a circle and a line and that symbol existed for generations before JK Rowling used it. You know, if anything, I'll tell you. We want to separate ourselves from JK Rowling and all the negativity that she's attracted the last couple of years, with, you know, her stance on on trans rights. And, you know, the whole community, we are extremely embracing of the community. Probably most of our employees are, fall into that, you know, family of ACE trans by whatever it is lesbian gay, that great. Are you a good artist? That's all I care about. I do show up. And are you a good artist? Those are the two main qualities I look for in anybody walking in the door. Showing up is the hardest part. If you can show up, I can teach you how to make magic wands. So just finding people willing to show up as the really, really has proven to be the tricky part. For the most part, but now we don't, we don't. I mean, like Luna Lovegood swan is a fun one to make. So we make a bunch of those. Ginny Weasley swan is a fun one to make I make a bunch of those. But it's you know, it's our interpretation of it. It's not the same size. It's not exactly the same design, you know, but it's got a four flute twist and then a little cross hatching on it and it's black. Okay, well, if I sell this as Ginny Weasleys wand, then maybe I've got a problem. But if I just make a cool looking black wand and I say it kind of looks like the one used by Barney Barney huntin up and up Bunny. Bunny right on Barney right in the movies. Yeah, I can you know, I can say something like that. It's It's fact it's not Ginny Weasley has won the wand used by Barney right in the movies. Like I noticed there weren't any that look like they're pulled directly from there's actually a couple that caught my eye that are very, very original and unique. There's one The Stranger Things one with the Hellfire Club and everything in that and the die. I love that I'm probably going to end up leaving with that one. Yeah,
Brooksie:that one that one is awesome concept and then how you got like yeah, like he said the die in the middle where it looks like a d&d dice. Just incredible.
Ed:We weren't going to actually do that. And then I went to one of our artists we have the three girls who work in the back and I went to one of them with the idea and it was this collaborative the the customers asked for I need some stranger things want great will make you some stranger things wants and I played with the logo there to the you know, kind of fit it to a one we wands ones are long and skinny T shirts are big squares. Yeah, so to take that big square, you know, Hellfire logo and kind of adapt it to, to, you know, to work on our engraver. And, and then we're like, we need something in the middle and we do what you know, like, on your wand here, you can see this little indentations. We call those bands between the black and the brown sections there. There's, there's like three bands on that one. And we're just going to do like a typical band. And she goes, Well, you know, Can I can I make it look like a D 20? And I'm like, Yes, you can. And it was her idea. And so that's the collaborative aspect that having all these artists and bringing in, you know, she's got a construction background, but she's also like the Ren Faire the Connecticut Ren Faire costumer who's like the main customer for the whole renaissance fair. So yeah, and she's a huge d&d Geek as well. She's probably gonna listen to this and laugh at I'm talking about it. I Lindsey. And, but that was entirely her idea. And I love that collaborative aspect that we bring up the whiteboard that's on the wall right here. He had been here a couple of days ago, he was seeing we just did a whole Sanderson Sisters, Hocus Pocus, sene and all the details on there, and we just sit together and have kind of like, we're all sitting here at the table today. We got everybody together and go, Well, what do we want it to look like? Now? What do you want, you know, you go make go make one, go make one and we'll see what works and then kind of come up with stuff that we know doesn't work because if it doesn't work, let's not bother even showing it to the customer. But you come up with a few concepts and you show them off and she goes yep, I want 30 of those and 30 of those and 30 of these. Cool, awesome, we're having fun.
Brooksie:Have you thought of like making any from like, based upon, like, say Gandalf, VHS staff or Sauerland staff and like Lord of the Rings
Ed:we did that years ago. We actually so one of our clients is an Air Force base out in I want to say Denver area, and their base mascot is called the wizard and so everybody there is the wizard 375th operational support Squadron and they buy from us every year. You're a set of magic wands with like, you know, Airman of the year or Officer of the Year enlisted Man of the Year, everybody. And so we make those for them in one year. Several years ago, they asked us to make, like a Team of the Year Award, like the big award, and it was this big twisty Gandalf staff, ah, that four of them. The problem with that is, you know, you think, again, doll staff, and it's got that big crystal in it. Yep. And that big crystal ball weighs a lot. And wood doesn't actually like to wrap around things. So I can make that like little fingers. Like, you almost need like giant prongs, that would hold it. You could steam it, probably. But it winds up being hours and hours of work. And it's so far outside our wheelhouse that I actually have the kind of job I just say, You know what, I'm not going to do it. Okay, you know, I know what my strengths are, I know what my team's strengths are. And our strengths are doing what you can see here very quickly, crystals. They're fun. Yeah, they look nice, but they take forever to make the very custom fit hole. It's all done by hand, you hand me a crystal and a piece of wood, I've got to sit there and measure very accurately and draw and cut and fit and cut and fit and cut and fit for about an hour. Well, that doesn't make any money for the business. So when I can spend that hour making, you know, 10 or 12 ones that I can sell for 20 bucks apiece, that's a way better spent our than the one, you know, 50 $60 job. So, so we'll do stuff like that. But I try not to
Brooksie:have you thought about making any of the brooms that are in the Harry Potter series, like the Nimbus 2000? For example.
Ed:There? Yes, we thought about it. And we very quickly ascertained that we would not do it, there's couple brooms actually right above your head here, tag so finds nothing else. It's again, not in our wheelhouse. There are some wonderful broom makers out there, I can refer you to a few of them. I just I it's I've got to focus on my strengths. And you know, I having an aerospace engineering manufacturing background. Yep, I will analyze the streamlining the lean manufacturing aspects of it down to the point where we can just crank through, you know, optimizing, it's, it becomes almost an assembly line, it's still completely handmade, every pieces is going through that handmade. But when you take an AWHONN, and if I can borrow your wand here, yeah, we've got, we've got facets here on the handle, and we've got around feature, we've got the three bands, well, if I want to go make those three bands, on this one, I've got to put the band in, and then I've got to go and tear the machine down and slide everything over and put that band in, you don't have got to tear the machine down and slide everything over build and put that one in that one. And so I've probably spent, you know, three minutes, just making those three features. If I've got a whole stack of these dials, and I'm cranking through every one of them to do this one, and then I changed the machine and crank through every one of them to do that one. Yep, you're talking 1510 to 15 seconds per feature. So that's where the economy of scale builds in, and I can make this entire one in just a few minutes. And then I could sell it for 15 $20 and still make a profit, you can still pay labor and still pay materials and you know, internet bills, and all that other fun stuff. To keep the business running. That's where it comes from. But it's still 100% handmade, but it does you have to you have to adopt those kind of principles, or you're gonna go to business, you know, there's, there's no way to have it both ways. If I don't do that, then I'm in to the point where I've got to, you know, I've got to charge more. And then I've got a personal compass of well, how much can I charge for a piece of wood, you know, regardless of the size, so let's make it more expensive wood. Well, that's metal. Now now I've got to go add that cost to well, let's make it a bigger one, and add that cost to because now I'm gonna get less ones out of the block of wood, it all spirals, it all works together. But that's the those are the kinds of things that are just constantly, we're here we have to think about and we do think about day in and day out is those types of manufacturing decisions. So, so looking around, we see you've got the ones and there's also you got the one stands, you've got little pieces like there's some that have like skeletons on them of that, too. You got 3d printers, how did that end up being worked into the one making process? That's been a really fun activity. My son, Calvin and I, many, many years ago, got a 3d printer and started kind of just fiddling around with it. I mean, he was he's 16 now so he was probably nine when we got our first printer, and it was an abomination like we could not get the thing to work at all, but it's become a passion of his that he he He loves doing it. He's actually here in the back of the shop today making new models and get keeping our printers running. We have four printers right now. Actually, we have six, but we have four operating printers. And he he's the one who comes in and you know, there if there nozzle clogs, or we need to change, you know, we want to change try new filament, or we need to get a new model changed or change settings on the printers, he's gonna handles all that stuff. So it's been really great to now expand what we do. We have, there's actually a whole bunch of stuff you haven't even seen here. There's like little owls that we put on the ends of the ones we're getting ready to make those. You mentioned the skeletons skulls, the pumpkins there, you can see our pumpkin spice ones up there. made with real cinnamon,
Brooksie:I also love your the ones that have like the Kraken with the octopi Yeah, tentacles wrapping around the wand.
Ed:It's It's been fun for me as a mechanical design engineer to infuse that skill set to Calvin. And when I say you know, hey, we need to have this and shorter longer, bigger, smaller, figuring out the tolerances, figure things they're gonna fit, he's been doing a great job, especially for someone who's only 16 years old, he's been doing a fantastic job with all that. But it's, it's a now it's a critical part of what we do. It's you know, those those two ones up there with the Kraken and tentacles and the skulls there. Those are two of our most popular designs. The new one we just did with the pumpkin spice there I expect is going to be fairly popular and she might want taller pumpkins skinnier pumpkins, I don't know what she's gonna want. She might want ones that have you know, that are a bigger diameter would not work to figure out a way to reprint the pumpkins with the bigger hole in them. So it's going to all come down to you know, somebody has to do all that. It's, it's a skill set. I know I could do. But I also know I don't have the time for it right now. So to have him here and able to do it is just fantastic.
Brooksie:So like the little dragon pieces that you have, that you have out front. And just that you have, like, on the shelves, like the different colors of green and the F ones that are like a mixture of like a purples and blues.
Ed:That's a rainbow filament that we order and it changes color as it goes through the roll. And so there's one printing back there now on our Big Sur Moon printer. And it's so as the print, you know, the print is all layers of plastic, you know, and so as it prints each layer, each layer is about the same color. But then as you go let you know, you know, through a few dozen layers, it'll start to change from like orange to purple to green. And that's when you print something really big, you get a lot of different color transitions. When we print our like our little, definitely hollow stance. Those tend to all actually come out just like one color. They won't you won't, you won't even see a color change in the piece. But then when you line them all up, you'll see all the different colors in in the pieces that were just printed sequentially, it jumps out at you at that point.
Brooksie:Have you have you thought about 3d printing something like the dragon eggs which were in the Goblet of Fire?
Ed:Yeah, we have them up front him up all those right up front. There that's another popular item because then the little dragons that we sell and have they have a home.
Brooksie:Shall I like that?
Ed:Where can people find you if they want to buy any of the fantastic items that you guys have for sale here? Well, again, welcome to the bustling metropolis of Stafford Springs, Connecticut. We are at 13 furnace Ave. right in downtown Stafford there's fantastic ice cream shop and pizza shop and coffee shop and one of the best cideries in the state of Connecticut right up the street. Couple of the great shops free parking. right smack dab in the middle between New York City and Boston. Five minutes off it for open 10 to five Tuesday through Sunday. And since we live here in the building, we're actually here anytime you want to come see us we're here I promised you can visit our any of our social media, Facebook Instagram. Tik Tok Twitter is at Orchard works all one word. And our website is we have a few different URLs you can use. The most popular one is orchard works ctx.com I also bought like magic wands.us and orchard works.net. Because early on, I didn't want people to like rip us off. So I have those as well. Right online is great way to reach us. You could DM us on Instagram. If you even hit us up in the comment section on tick tock chance. Chances are we're gonna see it. Awesome. I love it. It's the difference. You know every kid has gone out into the woods and picked up a stick and been like yeah, this is my one but to actually have the opportunity to get a custom one something that really just connects with you. It's absolutely fantastic. I love what you're doing here. Thank you so much for visiting. Absolutely. I This has been absolutely wonderful. Yeah,
Brooksie:like I said earlier in the recording of the just the atmosphere just coming in here it feels like I'm walking right into all of Anders shop and is expecting to see John her walk around the corner and be like, the one chooses the wizard Mr. Pata.
Ed:We, I will, I'll say we did think early on about adding special effects and having big things people could point out and we'd have like little buttons under the desk that would make smoke fire out of a dragon's head or something. Again, you know, there's an amount of BS that I want to do and then there's amount of BS that I don't I A, it's another thing to break be somebody's gotta like be there doing it right then right every time. And it just, it's, it's kind of more fun to just see happy people buying something that they like, and they're going to enjoy and and they're going to treasure for years. So we don't we don't do a whole bunch of that. Oh, that was awesome. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you, Ed for being on the show. Absolutely wonderful listening to you talk about this. Alright, everybody, thank you very much. Make sure to stay hydrated. And we'll see you in the next is.
Tanner:Thanks for listening this week. Guys. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that when we drop a new episode, you're the first amount. A big thank you also goes out this week to Ed Bryce at Orchard works for taking the time to sit and chat with us as well as show us around his truly magical one shot. You can find links to their website and social media in the episode description below. If you want to see photos from our time there, be sure to head over to either our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter pages. You can find us on those sites using at Dorkside Nexus. Again, thanks for joining us and as Corey always says Stay hydrated and we'll see you in the Nexus.