Family business thrives with rustic aesthetic, custom pieces

By Hollie Deese

While some people could never comprehend the thought of working with family, for others it is nothing but a dream come true. Like when Jenna Rummel’s son Xander came to her when he was 16 with the idea to create a custom headboard with lights. It was just the kind of idea that has sparked big change for all of them.

“We stayed at a ritzy hotel in Washington, DC, and they had a leather wall with lights above the bed,” Rummel says. Xander loved it, but wanted it more rustic, so he and his dad designed it – complete with dimmer lights and USB ports – and built it in the garage. Rummel then posted it on Facebook and the demand was immediate.

“We really just wanted to show our son that you could make something and sell it,” Brummel says. He has since gone off to college but still works for his parents when he comes home on the weekends, and his headboard project, now a regular part of the product line, in no small part helped the business grow the 13 employees.

Open a little more than four years, the Goodlettsville shop was originally a 15’ x 10’ booth at the now-closed Amberleaf Marketplace on the square in Gallatin. But as her clientele grew and the opportunity afforded, the store is now 3,500 square feet with a 6,800-square-foot shop in Hendersonville where they build custom tables and hutches, reworked windows, centerpiece boxes and, of course, the headboards.

Brummel offers design services too, helping people achieve the farmhouse look she excels at, and it is something she is able to do more of now that she has so much help in the store. But it is still completely a family business, and everyone is a part of it.

“My husband has a very demanding job, and then he comes home and runs the shop every night, and then does it again the next day. Then he works all day on Saturdays, and we literally just catch up with a rest on Sunday,” Brummel says. “A lot of nights my daughter and I will go down there, take dinner, eat with him. Then I’ll end up helping with some finishes. My daughter, she knows everything there is to know about all of our product lines because she sits here with me all the time after school. She can run the register, and we just have a lot of fun with it together.”

Plans are in the works for a second location this year too, in Nashville, now that the Goodlettsville expansion is complete. And the space is needed to accommodate their twice-annual trips to Pennsylvania to load up on salvage pieces to complement their stock of Braxton Dixon salvaged pieces, managed by his widow Maryanna Dixon.

“Sometimes we’ll go to a barn that’s being torn down and even take the barn doors off, and that’s a lot of fun,” she says. “The artisan movement’s been so big, and people now tend to go in furniture stores and think, ‘Okay, this looks like came out of a box. I don’t want it.’ It is unbelievable because a few years ago we were making all the signs that now Hobby Lobby has a thousand of, and Joanna Gaines is not just to thank for that. It’s the people that are making them, the artisan malls like Amberleaf and all the barn sales. I think they’ve changed the market.”

Chic Artique
130-132 S. Main St., Goodlettsville
615-982-9409

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