Monica McCleary and Jessy Duque, partners in both life and a new area business, left North Carolina and came our way, confident they’d thought of everything.
They found a place to live. They found a spot for their furniture-building wood shop and woodworking classes, a bright, cavernous room on Riverwood Drive in Pembroke.
They bought tools and machines to cut and shape wood, had some drywall installed, created a marketing campaign and registered their new business with the state. They had confidence, hope.
They named their new shop Cirro Studio, a reference to the white, fluffy cirrus clouds that the women see as representing joy and freedom.
Everything was in place in early February, a few weeks before the world stopped spinning. You know the rest. Cirro Studio is closed until further notice.
“It’s definitely a scary realization,” said McCleary, who was forced to shut down the operation after just a week or two after opening because of the coronavirus.
“So much of our business was going to be for in-person classes, so we had to figure out how to change things and look more online. It’s scary for small businesses right now.”
They are selling items like maple cutting boards, and gift cards for future classes, whenever they resume. More items are in the works.
They make a great team. McCleary working wonders with wood, Duque running the business, attending to all the details.
Businesses are forever hitting roadblocks, but this? Not much you could do to prepare for a pandemic that’s killed thousands of people across the globe and left millions unemployed.
Cirro Studio closed shortly before all non-essential businesses were ordered to do so. Small businesses are now desperate for loans or grants from a stimulus package that’s gotten off to a rocky start.
This is Duque’s area. She recently started a full-time job in multicultural marketing at Southern New Hampshire University, allowing McCleary to chase her dream. She’s on the business end, keeping records, promoting, doing whatever she can in the limited time she has while working 40 hours elsewhere.
With no money coming in to the fledgling business, Duque is in charge of securing financial help. She filed an application on April 1 seeking an Economic Injury Disaster Loan from the Small Business Administration.
She’s gotten a series of automated updates and said she doesn’t “want to put all my eggs into one basket. I know the government is overwhelmed with applications, so I don’t have too much faith in getting it.”
She’s got more faith in a grant given to artists and artists only. That would mean $5,000, which would help, a little.
“We’re going through the emotions that most (business owners) are going through,” said Duque. “Some days you wake up scared about the future, and it’s a weird time, and you don’t think it will ever happen, but this has forced us to think outside the box and think creatively.”
So Duque uses social media more than ever to spread the word about the business and how customers can commission them to build hand-crafted furniture, including chairs, stools and tables.
McCleary is the carpenter, the artist whose soft-spoken nature belies her passion to reach a goal. This goal.
She said she’s always loved working with her hands in some way, like family members who are electricians, carpenters, contractors. Her grandmother was a seamstress, the mentor who showed her granddaughter how to make stuffed animals when she was 4.
Now that granddaughter sews, draws, paints and carves.
“I was fascinated with creating something all by yourself, not having to go to the store to get it,” McCleary said. “That always stuck with me, and I always wanted to get into woodworking.”
They met, fell in love and lived in North Carolina, where Duque was in the marketing department at Haywood Community College. The school had a program. All about building with wood.
“I didn’t realize you could go to school to learn that,” McCleary said. “She told me to check it out, that it was right up my alley.”
I visited during a woodworking class in early February. Wow, that seems long ago. Certainly longer than two months.
Way back then, in a class that featured six students who stood shoulder to shoulder as McCleary – excited and optimistic about the future, her new home, her new business – showed the proper and safe way to use the machines, spread all over a giant garage-like space.
She showed her students how to use the bandsaw, the router table, sandpaper. The high ceilings trapped the buzzing of machines and the carving of wood. The students made cheese boards.
Some of McCleary’s wood-carved furniture was on display near the information and registration area, by the plant, window and entrance. She makes chairs, stools, tables and chests. She was ready to start something brand new, in a place that reminded her of the western mountains in North Carolina, where she once lived.
Duque remains busy working her full-time job, supporting and coordinating their new business and waiting for responses to her requests for help.
Trying to secure financial assistance is a problem the two never saw coming. They had planned for everything ahead of time. Well, almost everything.
“I’m still a little in shock about everything and we’re worried,” McCleary said. “But we’re trying to stay positive and focus on our online store. We have to figure out our new business and our new life.”