When Jesse Vogel was a kid growing up in Mineral Point, he’d spend hours building and tinkering in his family’s workshop. But he wouldn’t have bet that one day he’d run a thriving custom woodworking business with his dad Jason in that very spot.
The roots of Big Fish Woodworks run deep, starting with the house and pole barn shed Jesse’s parents bought on six acres of Driftless Wisconsin land back in 1979. Jesse and his brothers helped their dad turn the shed into a modest workshop, and then upped the ante years later, when they added two thousand square feet and much of the equipment they use today.
“We grew up that way,” he says. “We were always messing around in the shop.”
But the shift from hobby to business came from an unlikely catalyst.
“It started with my dad getting a hip replacement,” Jesse says. “He needed something to do while he was recovering.”
While Jason — who worked as a general contractor, and before that an engineer — recuperated, he began experimenting with a new tool, a computerized router with incredible precision.
“We never had a tool like that,” Jesse says, who works in healthcare IT and lives in Verona with his wife Erin and their two kids. “We’re gadget-y people, and he nerded out on it.”
Jason’s enthusiasm led to Jesse playing around with it, which led to him realizing they could make just about anything out of wood with it.
With a desire to work with his dad and knowing their skills would complement each other — Jesse excels at designing and bringing products to market, while Jason always knows the right tools and approach to solve any problem — they launched Big Fish Woodworks a year and a half ago.
Business is booming, thanks to an item the pair never predicted would be their biggest hit.
“The thing we sell the most of — by far, by far, by far — are cribbage boards,” Jesse says.
Roughly eighty-five percent of the shop’s products are these beautiful wooden game boards, which Jesse and Jason often customize. They’ve created boards with the peg track following the perimeter of a brewery’s logo and boards featuring northern Wisconsin lakes as highly personal wedding gifts.
“The thing that’s been so gratifying is that these pieces are instant family heirlooms,” Jesse says of the board and the other custom items they make. “Seeing people’s reactions and how they feel such ownership — it’s super, super cool for us as a couple of guys who like building stuff for it to have this impact.”
Jesse also has a deep appreciation for this chance to work with his father, and for what his kids, Rayna and Maccoy, are learning through seeing their dad and grandpa run a business.
“More than anything, I hope they see that familial bond, that you’re a team, that you’re in this together,” he says. “But I also hope that they see we took this from a random idea to making a legit business out of it.”
Jesse drives the message home by showing his kids some of the reviews that Big Fish customers write. “I say, ‘This is why we do it. That’s how you want to make people feel.’”
– Katie Vaughn
Photos courtesy of Jesse Vogel.
Katie Vaughn is the editor and co-founder of Northerly. She is a University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University-trained journalist with experience as a writer, reporter, editor, blogger and author. She lives in Madison with her husband, daughter and son, and is always up for an adventure.