Colin Hackney

I am a sole trader whose heart lies in design and creation. You will only ever find me ‘on the tools’ - never growing a business or doing marketing. For that reason, my reputation is everything. A consistently excellent standard of work provides customer references that are far more honest and reliable than expensive advertising. I have many longstanding customers and much of my new work comes by word-of-mouth so I have nothing to gain from either over-committing or under-delivering. My first foray in to woodwork was at school, when two lifelong passions and an absence of money led to me making a bass guitar and a skateboard. On leaving school, I went to art college where, as well as paint, I made jewellery and studied design technology which introduced me to a range of materials, wood being just one of them. After college, I dabbled with product design and furniture-making but necessity soon forced me to take up a carpentry job for a maintenance company. After learning on the job through some huge historic building projects, I decided to go it alone. The majority of my early self-employed work involved sash window restoration, replacement doors and interior carpentry on large period properties in Bristol. As my client base grew and began to understand me, they started to commission freestanding and fitted furniture and the rest is history really.