Made in the Ozarks: Native Range

With products now on Amazon, Walmart.com, Etsy and Wayfair, Aaron Black says his decor company is on track to nearly double sales this year and reach $1.4 million in revenue.

He and his team at Native Range LLC make wooden signs and shelving products in a 3,500-square-foot warehouse in south Springfield. But a focus on e-commerce means the products are purchased and shipped across the country, with just 2% of sales coming from Missouri.

SBJ: What are your core products?
Aaron Black: We started mostly with signs. We really were early on the “welcome” sign trend back in 2016. I think we sell more welcome signs than anybody else except Hobby Lobby. And now, shelving and organizational solutions.

SBJ: When did you know the business would be a success?
Black: I don’t think I knew until I started selling. My doctorate is in management. I was a college business professor for six years. I’ve always been someone who started businesses. My first business was a T-shirt business when I was 22. I was going to sell beach T-shirts; the business name was Bobby Tropic. That didn’t work. I tried other businesses throughout the years. I probably made 30 or 40 different products before one of my products sold. They always say you don’t have to figure out how to make $1 million. You’ve got to figure out how to make $1 and then just repeat that process.

SBJ: How did you learn woodworking?
Black: I’m self-taught in my basement. I tell people, though, don’t confuse me for a woodworker. I’m a business guy first. We make high-quality products, but we’re an e-commerce company first and woodworking second. That lets me stay flexible to see if there’s opportunity in something outside of wood products, which is to some degree why we tried to move into some of the prints, digital downloadable products.

SBJ: How do you conduct market research?
Black: With the analytics built into the platforms like Shopify, Etsy and Amazon, we really have a good understanding of who our target customer is, which tends to be females 25 to mid-40s who own a home and have kids. They have an income range of $50,000-$100,000. As far as just figuring out what sells, a lot of it is trial and error. We use a website called eRank, which helps us put in certain product keywords (to know) how many people are searching for a certain keyword. So maybe, floating shelves, for example, and then it will also tell you how many sellers are out there selling that product. If there’s a lot of people searching for this product and low competition, we know that’s a product category we want to move into.

SBJ: What was the impact of COVID-19 on production and sales?
Black: It was frightening because actually last February is when I quit my job. Then a few weeks later, COVID hits and I’m thinking, “What have I done?” My business is going to tank. Turns out, everybody is stuck at home, they can’t go to the stores and they’re getting these stimulus checks and they’re shopping on the internet. It was incredible the amount of sales that were coming in. I’ve never worked so hard and so long in my life. If the e-commerce migration has stickiness, then we’re in good shape. There’s also a renewed interest in buying locally made goods, American-made goods.