Hi, my name is David Jay Jantzi. My second name being Jay, hence the name Jay's Furniture. I grew up on a farm, close to the town of Aylmer, Ontario (south of London). In 1989, my older brother Calvin started business handcrafted solid wood furniture. At that time, Calvin was working alone, his goal, building a product that would endure and be around for many years ( a lifetime). Building a product with that in mind, he had happy satisfied customers who advertised for him by word of mouth. As word got around, and with the increasing demand for solid wood furniture, my brother needed help, and within a couple of years after starting his business, my brother-in-law Paul and myself were in the shop working alongside Calvin. We had requests for any kind of furniture you could think of. At that time, we did not have a showroom to display our furniture. Our customers would walk through the door directly into our workshop, often times with a rough sketch of what they were looking for. We would clear a space on the workbench, lay out the sketches, discuss details, and then get at it and do it. In 1993, we moved to another location that had a larger building as we needed the extra space to expand. We hired several more employees, mostly family members, to help. Then in 1997, we built a 2,000 square foot building for a showroom on the farm where our workshop was, which gave us the opportunity to display many various items for our customers to view. We now had 3 different departments in our business. A workshop where we handcrafted the furniture, a finishing (staining) department, and a showroom. Paul was responsible for the projects in the workshops. I enjoyed relating with customers, showing them what we did, sales, etc and was mostly in the showroom. In November of 2005, I moved north to Powassan, Ontario (close to North Bay) with dreams of starting my own business, and in April 2007 I opened my store in Powassan. Calvin and Paul continue to build furniture for me as well as a number of Mennonite woodworking shops in the area of St.Jacobs and Kitchener. more... See more text