His marriage over and future uncertain, Tristan Pereida-Rice may have been down, but he was determined. It was June 2013. At age 27 and newly single, he didn’t have much money to furnish a studio apartment in Santa Monica, California. Rather than buy a bed frame, he decided to make one.
“I had no woodworking experience, just some YouTube videos,” said Tristan.
Tristan and his three siblings grew up in a family with a philosophy of: if it can be built, you can build it. “We spent a lot of time with our dad in his garage tinkering with things. He was in there rebuilding something instead of going out and buying it,” he said. “So I thought, ‘what does it take to build something like this?’”
I never wanted to be in business with anybody but my family because we can count on each other. We’re in it together.
Kalen Pereida-Rice
He researched a few designs and got to work. A few months later, his bed was made and a business was born.
“My brother moved in and we built a bed for him too,” Tristan said. “It just grew from there.”
Timeless Wood Furniture prides itself on building high quality, hand-crafted furniture.
“We’re really passionate about constructing things and actually making something from scratch, and taking something that was a big stack of wood and turning it into something that’s usable for decades,” said Kalen Pereida-Rice.
As demand for their work grew, so did the business. Tristan and Kalen moved operations back to Arizona, where they’re from, and hired their two other siblings, Ashton and Amras. Today Timeless Wood Furniture has seven full-time employees with plans to hire more. Each piece is built, sanded and stained at the company’s warehouse in Glendale.
“We are building something that will last generations, not just a lifetime,” said Tristan.
The company joined Amazon Handmade in 2015 and sales have been strong. Invited artisans reach hundreds of millions of customers worldwide selling their unique, handcrafted goods through Amazon Handmade.
“We’ve been growing 20 percent year over year,” Tristan said.
Family is the foundation of their business. The brothers credit their parents for instilling in them that with enough patience and perseverance, they can build anything – including a furniture business.
“We were brought up so close and we’ve always been best friends,” said Kalen. “I never wanted to be in business with anybody but my family because we can count on each other. We’re in it together.”
