Building for Wolves
RealCraft is committed to tradition and authenticity
RealCraft Founder and Owner Don Rees of Gig Harbor, Washington, began his career as a timber framer and custom homebuilder, putting a special touch on each of his homes: a signature real-wood door. When that special touch evolved into carriage doors, people took notice, and he happened upon a new career path.
“I’ve spent most of my life as a designer and carpenter. I’ve swung a hammer most of my life. This company came late for me, at 50 years old,” Rees says. “The market found me, and I recognized an opportunity.”
Rees began his career as a designer and builder in the 1970s. He was building a farmhouse in 1995 and decided to use carriage doors, an unusual choice, on the garage. Five years passed before he built another set of doors the same way. Rees realized that he had started something when he began getting email inquiries about these unique swing-out garage doors. “But I ignored them for three years. I was busy at that time designing and building houses,” he says.
Then in 2003, he came home one evening and opened one of those emails. He went online and searched the market. “No one else was doing it,” he says. So he revamped his website and changed course, changing his company to Real Carriage Door, which would later evolve to Real Carriage Door & Sliding Hardware before its rebranding to RealCraft. “The company began to double in size,” he says, though traditional garage door dealers questioned why he would produce the swing-out garage doors. “I upset the industry,” he jokes.
Built for Wolves
Rees characterizes the impetus for his new company as the “Lone Wolf Project.”
“It was the last home I designed and built before this business took over my life,” he says. The client wanted modern eclectic. The house was built in the shape of an H with three timber-frame towers, carriage garage doors and Rees’ signature front door. He describes a fellow builder and good friend who questioned his process and involvement and why each home took longer than a typical home build.
“He told me one has to build for sheep,” Rees says. “It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I told him I don’t build for sheep, I build for wolves. Our entire company is for the lone wolves. They want quality.”
While Rees started his door business with swing-out garage doors, he produces entry and large custom doors as well. When the recession hit, he wanted to use that period for reinventing and expanding his offerings. He looked at the agricultural sliding hardware used on barn doors and decided to “take it inside.” He redesigned what he saw in terms of sliding door hardware and began offering this type of door construction and the hardware in his product line. In 2009, he changed the company’s name to Real Carriage Door & Sliding Hardware (now RealCraft).
Rees describes a popular use for his sliding door hardware: A group of retirement homes has purchased large amounts of the hardware to save space by eliminating swinging doors while also ensuring compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act by still accommodating wheelchairs. This is also becoming a trend in the hotel space, he adds.
Today, Rees has a nationwide customer base, with the majority of his clients in California, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, the Carolinas and his home state of Washington. He employs about 40 people—office staff, custom designers and craftspeople. His doors and hardware are mostly sold through designers and architects through the custom-build process, with about 50% of sales in high-end residential and 20% in commercial. The remainder is hardware-only sales.
The team at RealCraft takes pride in providing the highest level of quality with a quick turnaround. “Out of cheap, fast and good, you can pick two but not all three. We pick quality and speed,” Rees says.
He explains that the company sells a lot of hardware for use on its own doors, so the business manufactures and keeps a large inventory. Most of what RealCraft offers can be shipped out on the same day an order is received. Rees says, “We want to be the Amazon of what we do.”
A couple of Rees’ favorite local projects include the Harbor History Museum, featuring massive reclaimed Douglas-fir doors in a chevron pattern, and 7 Seas Brewing, which has redwood doors with hand-forged steel hardware. He has also built doors and hardware for resorts, public spaces and large hotel chains, including Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton and Hyatt.
RealCraft doors and hardware have been featured in several print publications and home improvement television programs. For example, the company’s hex bar modern sliding hardware was recognized by Architectural Record as the best new product of the year when it was released in 2011. A RealCraft door can be seen in the background on the set of the cable morning show “Fox & Friends,” and doors have been featured on an episode of “Man Caves” on the DIY Network.
Real Everything
This year and beyond, RealCraft aims to expand beyond doors and hardware to offer butcher block countertops, tables, shelving and other woodcrafts as well as furniture design services. Rees says he also plans to expand the door line to interior doors and offer full-house packages, more wood species options and choices in panels. “We will always be developing our doors and hardware, but there are so many possibilities for growth and opportunities for our craftspeople to utilize their talents in new areas,” he says.
Rees explains that, at first glance, RealCraft competitors may appear to offer the same products. But, while one product may look nearly identical to another, he says the key differentiators are the materials and expert craftsmanship. RealCraft doors and hardware are just that—real. They are made from solid wood and metals, sourced and crafted in the United States. In fact, nearly all of the materials originate in the Gig Harbor area. Doors are crafted using traditional building methods that ensure a level of quality that Rees says will last for a lifetime.
Rees also uses the “real” concept to describe his staff. “We use real wood for an authentic product made by real people,” he says. When the company recently began the rebranding from Real Carriage Door & Sliding Hardware to RealCraft in order to capture the breadth of its product line, the staff insisted that “real” needed to remain in the name. “We have real people on the phone, on the shop floor. The work is handcrafted. Our people make the doors—they don’t work a machine. Personal integrity goes into each product,” Rees says.
He concludes, “Our company’s new name, RealCraft, is based on our value and commitment to using real materials and craftsmanship in everything we do. Whatever we do, we will stay under the ‘real craft’ umbrella.”