May 8, 2017

Meet Ross Kidder of Ross Alan Reclaimed in North Hollywood

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ross Kidder.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Ross. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was born and raised in Michigan. I moved to Los Angeles as an Artist in my 20’s and quickly fell into dumpster diving for wood to build little pieces of furniture to sell. The passion for reclaimed wood was born and I started to build for local Los Angeles designers refining my craft along the way. My wife and I moved back to the Midwest for a brief period and I fell in love with the barns I grew up with. Barn wood became the ultimate material for me to create with so when it came time to move back to Los Angeles, I brought the wood too! I started selling and building out of the material in my garage, then a small industrial office space, then a warehouse, and now a 10000-square foot industrial space. We love what we do and the stories we get to share along the way!

Has it been a smooth road?
I’m not sure I would call it “smooth,” but the level of interest in what we do has been strong from the start and we’ve just tried to build on that as we move forward. I truly love woodworking, so all of the difficulties are generally easier to navigate because I feel very strongly that this is what I was put on this earth to do. I also have the best wife in the world who works just as hard as I do, so that makes me feel like there’s nothing we can’t handle as long as we stick together. Gotta also give a shout out to my crew at the shop who backs me up every step of the way.

So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Ross Alan Reclaimed story. Tell us more about the business.
Ross Alan Reclaimed is a reclaimed wood shop that brings barn wood from the Midwest and the Canadian border to sell in Los Angeles. I originally wanted to simply be a lumber yard with some side projects along the way, but the level of interest in custom furniture made with reclaimed wood has dictated our path towards more of a custom furniture shop as well as a lumber yard. We presently only work with old growth reclaimed Midwest lumber and that’s the way I would like to keep it, but who knows what the future holds.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We hope that people see the importance of using materials that are already available without having to contribute to deforestation. That’s one of the things we love about this world. We also love that this is old growth lumber. Everything at the shop is taken from barns that are 150-200 years old and the strength of the wood far surpasses the new growth materials used in the majority of furniture sold in LA. We only see the world of reclaimed wood growing stronger as the years pass.

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