The evolution of a family business

MORDEN — Prairie Barnwood Ltd. may be a small furniture operation in southern Manitoba’s Pembina Valley but when owner Blayne Wyton was thinking about changing the company’s focus, he looked to a Japanese conglomerate and an Italian sports car business for encouragement.

Before Sony was known for audio and video equipment, its first product was an electric rice cooker; and before Ferruccio Lamborghini turned his attention to luxury automobiles, he made tractors.

To Wyton, those shifts seemed much greater than the one he was contemplating and ultimately chose to pursue. If they could evolve and find success, maybe he could, too.

At the end of May, Wyton announced in an open letter to customers that after almost two decades, Prairie Barnwood was stepping away from offering made-to-order furniture handcrafted using predominantly reclaimed wood.

More recently, he’s publicized the company’s new focus: crafting a line of architectural features that includes shelves, mantels and ceiling beams. It’s a new direction but it will maintain the same look and feel that Prairie Barnwood customers have come to love.

Sitting in the studio of his shop, located about 90 minutes southwest of Winnipeg in the Morden Industrial Park, Wyton explains that the rising price of materials and the uncertainty surrounding United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs factored into the decision.

The tattooed and bearded businessman names white oak, a species of wood he used to purchase from the U.S., as one example. In 2019, it cost $4 per board foot (a board foot is one foot square by an inch thick). Today, it’s $19.

The cost of shipping has quadrupled in recent years too, Wyton says. These financial realities caused the 46-year-old and his wife and business partner, Tara, to take a hard look at what they love doing and make a decision about how to move forward.

Deciding to step away from making furniture, Wyton says, was “horrific.”

“We built furniture for 18 years and kind of even raised our family with this business,” says Wyton, who has three children. (The eldest, Natalya, handles the company’s online presence.)

“I didn’t think it would be that emotional making the shift and adjustment,” he says. “It kind of came to the surface just how invested we were emotionally and mentally into each job, and making sure customers were happy and got what they wanted.”

Making the decision to evolve the company’s focus was difficult, but Wyton says he found joy in the idea as he read about businesses like Sony and Lamborghini.

It’s not the first time his life has changed course.

Wyton was born in Edmonton and raised 20 minutes east of the city in Sherwood Park, Alta. As a teenager, he worked for his grandfather’s company, which manufactured nylon tow ropes for the oil fields. He met Tara in college and the couple were married in 1999. The next year, they moved to Morden, where Tara grew up.

In 2001, Wyton started an antique refurbishing business. Seven years later, while driving through southern Ontario, he was inspired to start a company that would create brand-new furniture using wood reclaimed from old barns. He got started that year, officially incorporating the business two years later.

As he was starting Prairie Barnwood, he thought about how every customer at his antique refurbishing business had a story about the piece they brought in.

“When I had the opportunity to get into furniture I (thought), ‘I want to build stuff that will have that ability to last long enough for a story to be told about it,’” he recalls.

Wyton set up shop in an old chicken barn and got to work building tables, chairs and dressers using wood from barns in the Pembina Valley and southern Ontario. They were built anywhere from the 1850s to the 1930s.

In 2017, the Wytons purchased a one acre piece of property and built Prairie Barnwood’s current headquarters, a 6,000-square-foot building that includes a workshop, studio and showroom.

Over the years, Prairie Barnwood employees have dismantled more than 20 barns and used them to create thousands of pieces of furniture. The company has sold furniture as far away as Norway. In Canada, it sells products from coast to coast (though Wyton estimates that 70 per cent of Prairie Barnwood’s sales are in Manitoba).

Jackie Kagan discovered Prairie Barnwood online in 2019 and hired Wyton to refinish a maple dresser. The Winnipeg resident was so impressed with the company’s work that she and her husband hired Prairie Barnwood to build numerous custom pieces for their cottage at Falcon Lake.

Between a mantel, bathroom vanities, shelving, countertops and a dining table that seats at least a dozen people, there’s Prairie Barnwood furniture in just about every room. Each piece was custom-designed to fit the Kagan family’s space and style.

“Blayne and Tara were incredible to work with,” Kagan says. “Their attention to detail, craftsmanship and genuine passion made the entire process seamless. It was such a rewarding experience to work with a local company that takes so much pride in what they do.”

Greg and Shannon Griffiths had a similar experience when they hired Prairie Barnwood to build custom furniture for their home in Winnipeg’s Whyte Ridge neighbourhood. When the Griffiths put the house on the market a few years later, the eventual buyers loved the pieces so much that they included them in their purchase offer.

The Griffiths subsequently hired Prairie Barnwood to build furniture for their current home in Charleswood.

“We’re just super impressed by Blayne and his attention to detail,” Greg says. “His ability (to understand) the environment we were trying to create in the house… was exceptional. He just nailed it.”

Wyton is looking forward to delivering that same attention to detail and focus on customer service with Prairie Barnwood’s new line of architectural features.

The company has always existed to craft beautiful pieces that will add value to a home and become part of a family’s life. Prairie Barnwood’s employees still get to do that now — it’s just that instead of doing it with $10,000 dining sets, they’re doing it with $300 shelves.

“We get to help more people and be part of their homes,” Wyton says. “That (is) exciting.”

In the coming weeks, the Wytons will host a grand re-opening event that will allow the community to help them celebrate the latest evolution of Prairie Barnwood. (Stay tuned to social media for details.) In the meantime, people can already stop by the studio at 445 Jefferson St. to see the company’s new products. The site is also now home to Hope Re:news, a Canadian charity started by the Wytons’ relatives that benefits people on the Greek island of Lesvos.

When he considers what his life might have been like if he hadn’t moved to the Pembina Valley, Wyton gets choked up. Without his wife and the community he’s now a part of, he says, he wouldn’t be the person he is today.

“The simplicity of Morden and the quality of life that it’s given us as a family has been life-changing,” he says. “I think it’s given us a bigger purpose than just working to accumulate or working to make money.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca