How to Start a Carpentry Business in 11 Simple Steps?

Have you worked in the carpentry trade for quite a long time? You must have already helped a lot of people with their small and large woodwork projects. So now, are you keen to start your own carpentry business to multiply your profits? 

But there is a very thoughtful path that you need to work on before switching from being an independent carpenter to a carpentry business owner. As of 2022, there are over 200,397 carpentry businesses in the United States. So, you can count on the competition you have to face. 

As you have decided to start a carpentry business, you must embrace yourself to face the competition and stand out from the crowd. 

For that, you need to be very precise about the business plan you make and the investments you make. This article with steps on how to start a carpentry business will cover everything for you to get going with the initiative.

11 Steps to Start Your Carpentry Business

The purpose of carpentry businesses is to build, repair, renovate and maintain commercial and residential buildings. A business should offer all types of carpentry and woodworking services, from simple to complex projects. 

A successful carpentry business should start with having the right business name. Make sure the domain name and business name is unique and easily remembered for customers to count on it. When you are done with that, you can go ahead with the more practical steps.

A carpentry business is best known for structural carpentry and finish carpentry services. With structural carpentry, they take care of safety and health administration by embedding proper installation and repair jobs to maintain the integrity of residential and commercial buildings.

Finish carpentry is the service where customers seek the restoration of historical monuments or buildings. It adds to the environmental beauty and raises the price for real estate buildings and properties around the community.

You have high-earning potential with the business idea of a carpentry industry. All you are advised is to follow the proper process to legally register your company and get ready to take up customer projects.

Here are the elaborated steps for you to learn how to start a carpentry business and grow your carpentry business to make impeccable profits:

Step 1: Prepare the business plan

The first step is to prepare the business plan with all the researched details. A properly crafted business plan will help you serve two purposes. It will help you keep track of whether your business is growing proficiently to meet your goals or not which will also help you secure funds from investors and banks. 

The business plan should consist of the following sections. Fill in with proper description:

• Executive summary
• Industry analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Marketing plan
• Services offered
• Business management process
• Daily operations
• Hiring employees
• Financial plan

Apart from the paper business plan, you should also have a structural understanding of what your new business aims to offer. You must have insight into who your target market is to be able to direct the marketing measures accordingly. 

The preferable customers or target market for your business are those willing to spend financial resources on building, repairing, or maintaining a home property or office building. Real estate developers and contractors can also offer you a high-volume construction business opportunity.

Step 2: Create a business structure

There are four evident types of business structures from which you must choose one for registering your carpentry business, which include:

• Sole proprietorship
• Partnership
• Limited Liability Company (LLC)
• Corporation

Talk to some expert or do your research on your preferable business structure and go with your preferable business owner’s policy. You might have to pay a minimal company registration cost to get legal documents and authority over your company.

Step 3: Register your business for the taxes

After deciding on the business structure, you must now register your brand for federal and state taxes before commencing with the business operations. You must apply for an Employee Identification Number (EIN). 

Step 4: Determine all the business expenses

Before starting a carpentry business and offering services to customers, you must determine all the business costs you have to bear at the initial stage.

Some of those new business costs include:

• Licensing and bonding fees
• Business insurance fees
• Buying and maintaining costs for tools and equipment
• Employee salaries
• Subcontracting fees

Step 5: Apply for a business bank account 

Before buying any of the tools or equipment, ensure you have your business bank account ready. It is because all the transactions that you do as a business investment should be recorded under the name of your carpentry business account. 

Using business bank accounts and credit cards is quite essential as it ensures the protection of personal assets. It means that if you are mixing up the business and personal bank accounts, your property valuables, such as a house and car, will be at risk if the company gets sued at some point. 

You can request the bank for a business credit card on behalf of the company account, as it always has better interest rates and high credit lines. Moreover, tax filing and accounting processes become easier when you apply for a business account. 

Step 6: Buy the necessary tools and equipment

Competing with over 200,000 carpentry businesses in the United States, you should count on having the best equipment and tools. It is just one of the many ways you can make your company stand out in the crowd and acquire more customers. 

Get all of the standard tools that your carpenters would need for basic and complex projects, such as chisels, tape measures, drills, hammers, and other toolkit items. But apart from that, you should also get the heavy and expensive set of equipment for being available for all projects. 

You might have to get a lathe machine, electronic saw, jigsaw, a truck/van for transportation, and others. It is a good idea to rent heavy equipment every time a request comes up for the same. But, the renters might not have the equipment you need at all times, which might cost you your customer and high-earning project. 

Therefore, it is better to buy some equipment for your new business. Even if you serve residential and commercial buildings, you must respond quickly to certain projects. And you cannot put the clients on hold just because you are arranging your tools and equipment. 

Step 7: Get small business insurance

You can talk to an insurance agent or hire an insurance company to help you with all the different types of business insurance needed for commencing your carpentry jobs. 

Getting business insurance is one of the most crucial additional costs of setting up a carpentry business. Here are the types of insurance you should consider having in your business:

• Get general liability insurance which is also called tradesman liability insurance. It is for insuring or protecting the income you earn from your business. Without it, you might be on the weaker side in a lawsuit if some shady client files it against you. 
• Get workers’ compensation insurance or carpenter insurance as well for your team of carpenters. It covers the compensation paid to the carpenters if they get injured during the job as occupational safety and health.
• The final business insurance should be for your vehicle to cover it for theft and accidents. 

Step 8: Create a website and market your business

Now that you have completely set up your carpentry business and are ready to attend projects, the next job is to market your brand and customer services to the target audience through online measures.

The website you create should briefly explain the carpentry industry and its stats. Following that, it should give the details on how your new business is better than your competitors. 

Explain the services you offer to the customers and highlight the unique selling propositions (USPs) to get a leading edge. Include an ‘About Us‘ section where you can tell your story about how you were into carpentry work as an independent worker before you started your own business. 

Step 9: Start doing digital marketing 

Every piece of content you add to your carpentry business website should be rich with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) measures. You must run keyword analysis to find the most common terms that your target market uses to find carpentry services. 

If you use those keywords strategically in your website content, the target audience will most likely find you over your competitors on Google search engine results pages. 

Following that, you can also list your business online by creating a Google My Business profile. It will impose local SEO on your business name, and the people searching for local businesses will get your contact details on the top of Google search result pages. 

You can also prefer using social media platforms for marketing your customer services to target audiences. Post DIY videos, service offers, graphic posts, and interactive posts to get people’s attention toward your carpentry business. You can also run paid or sponsored ads on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Your marketing strategy will decide how your target audience witnesses your brand. So, make sure you invest in an online marketing plan to stay ahead of the trend. 

Step 10: Try traditional marketing for your carpentry business

The traditional marketing measures have also proven to be effective for the carpentry industry as a whole. Such a marketing strategy works well, especially for small business owners. 

You can create flyers, banners, billboard ads, and newspaper ads to get customers’ attention in the real world. You can also add your business name to the truck/van you use for transportation to let people notice and remember it on the streets. 

Step 11: Get a job scheduling software

You will need a digital solution over manual measures to manage your business operations when you get a gush of customers and job requests. Therefore, scheduling software is important for a successful business to maintain operational efficiency. 

With carpenter job scheduling software, you can respond to customer requests immediately and assign jobs to your carpenters in just a few clicks. Being a small business, it becomes important for you to get sufficient time to manage your carpentry company’s operations. 

Most times, the customers have to wait a long time to get a price quote. And that deteriorates their customer satisfaction level, and they switch to competitor businesses. Therefore, with proper carpentry business software, you can easily manage most of your business tasks. 

How Much Does Carpentry Business Make? 

A carpentry business with a team of professional carpenters and a good customer base can earn a profit of around $104,000 per year or as much as $50 per hour. 

Apart from that, if you are willing to become a self-employed contractor with carpentry skills, you will earn between $25,000 to $75,000 per year. 

FieldCamp- The Ultimate Job Scheduling Software For Your New Carpentry Business

We bring you the best scheduling software of all time. FieldCamp is not just any usual job scheduling and business management software but is an overall package for you to eliminate manual operations. 

More than 90% of your business tasks can be handled and digitized over FieldCamp. Starting from scheduling jobs, dispatching the employees, creating invoices, processing payments, and collecting customer information, we have it all for you under one roof.

Do not limit your research to what we say here. Try out the features of FieldCamp all by yourself with the 7-day FREE trial and you will experience it yourself.