Artisan & Sons, a family-owned furniture business based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan has developed WoodShopAgent a free production-intelligence platform.
The company developed WoodShopAgent to solve a problem it kept running into repeatedly - namely pricing a project properly before the material is bought and the hours are already committed.
WoodShopAgent goes beyond a basic lumber or quote calculator. The platform combines species-specific material data, province-level cost differences, expected shop time, labour, waste, complexity and other production factors through a set of formulas built around how furniture is actually made. Instead of asking the maker to already know and enter all of those costs, WoodShopAgent does much of that work in the background and produces a structured estimate of what the project is likely to cost and what a sustainable selling price could look like.
That also changes the conversation with the customer.
A maker can provide a credible estimate early in the discussion and start shaping a commission around the customer’s budget, rather than either guessing at a price before knowing whether there is enough margin or waiting until too late in the process to talk seriously about cost. It gives both sides a clearer starting point and helps the maker decide whether the project is worth pursuing before significant time or money is committed.
The platform currently covers 31 wood species and adjusts calculations based on where the maker is located in Canada.
Makers can use WoodShopAgent to:
Being a skilled woodworker should not also require becoming an expert estimator, cost accountant and pricing strategist. WoodShopAgent is meant to take more of that burden off the maker, so they can make better business decisions without taking their attention away from the work they actually want to do.
WoodShopAgent is now in open beta and free for Canadian makers.
Artisans & Sons is inviting woodworkers to use it on real projects and help them refine it around how shops actually work.
