In late 2016 two key things happened that put my father and I on course to establish GrooveThis Woodshop. The beginning of an unlikely journey of building personalized pet feeders — though it would be another year before we finally got going.

The first was retirement. My father has been an entrepreneur his whole life, he started out in his early 20’s importing craft items from his native Peru, and going door to door to businesses to resell them. By his early 30’s he had opened a custom craft shop in a mall where a lot of what was on display had been crafted by him personally, things like personalized keychains, wooden puzzles, interactive learning toys for children, etc.

Back to 2016, he was semi-retired, had grown his hair shoulder length (despite giving ME a hard time when I had long hair in my teens) and his overall mood could be best described as bored — I'd say he looked a bit lost and retirement was not sitting well with him.
Me, I was working a corporate job as an engineer while daydreaming of owning my own business... maybe a consulting firm I thought. I wasn't sure what I was going to do next, but I had been saving money for whenever an opportunity presented itself.

In my pursuit of ideas of what to do, I suggested to my dad he should get back to crafting items in wood and put them on Etsy. He dismissed it at the time but clearly, the seed had been planted and would slowly begin nagging at him.

A few months after, the company I worked for began downsizing and my position was cut in the restructuring — this would be the second key event that led our paths to cross.

As we both looked for a new purpose, we began exchanging ideas over dinners and family gatherings — What would be a good business idea? We knew it should be crafted in wood due to my father’s expertise, and we wanted to offer some personalization options as well.
It was time for action and so we quickly purchased a saw, some hardware, a router, and a CNC machine; rearranged my one-car garage to make room for it all (it was very snug), and began fabricating our proof of concept.

It was crude, rough, and plain, but within a couple of days we had something that could work, a personalized pet feeder that even in its most basic form, showed potential; so, it was time to see if other people agreed. We posted on Etsy and within a week we had sold 2, the following week 5, and then 10… it slowly began snowballing, and it became painfully obvious we would not be able to continue working from my small garage — not to mention my entire living room was covered in sawdust all day, every day.

In July 2018 we moved into a small 1200sf warehouse, which at the time it felt HUGE compared to my garage. There we continued refining the manufacturing process, purchased more equipment to make us more efficient, began taking more orders, and thankfully the response and reviews were very positive.

By May 2020 we had outgrown our warehouse space — it began feeling just as small as my garage did in 2018, plus we’d need to hire help as we could no longer fulfill demand just the two of us, and so once again we moved to a bigger space.

Since, we have hired a handful of employees, created new feeder models, launched our website groovethiswoodshop.com and continue the never-ending process of improving the quality of our service and products.
We are incredibly grateful to everyone that trusted us with their purchase and look forward to an exciting future full of possibilities.

Thank you,
Adrian & Jorge Balbuena.