Eternal Timber and Design - by Shawn Wiebe

When Eternal Timber owner and master craftsman, Shawn Wiebe, was 15, his woodwork teacher told him, “Look Shawn, you either need to teach this class, or else get out there and be a carpenter.” Highly motivated and determined, Shawn became a self-employed carpenter when he was 18 and worked as a framer for a couple of decades. One day, in 2013, he had the idea to make some furniture out of the timbers left over from building. And the story of Eternal Timber began.

Later that year, when Shawn and his wife, Carlee, were on holiday in Mexico, he told her he’d like to start a furniture-making business. “She told me I was crazy,” Shawn says.  But, in the end, Carlee was up for the adventure too.

Six months after that holiday, Eternal Timber was set up and ready to go. Like most small businesses, Shawn admits it was a struggle at first. It was difficult to find customers and the hustle was tiring while he was still working as a framer. There were long days and long weeks of hard work. But after about 18 months, things started taking off.

Locally, word of mouth has been important to growing Eternal Timber. Shawn has good relationships with many Okanagan interior designers and they suggest his art to their clients. But thanks to the internet, Shawn’s business is also global. He has customers in Mexico and Europe as well as across North America, and enjoys travelling to consult with customers during the design process. He says that, in particular, the visual social media platform, Instagram, has been helpful for broadening his reach around the world. Eternal Timber now has more than 10.5K Instagram followers. 

But no matter how successful a business is, there are always challenges. Next time you’re in the showroom, ask Shawn to tell you the story of that time he made a table that was three times the length of a queen size bed, and so heavy it took 12 people to carry it. And it needed to be delivered through a third storey window in downtown Kelowna.…