Lynchburg furniture maker looks to make a difference

An entrepreneur in Lynchburg is moving forward with a years-old vision to establish two schools that he hopes could play a role in turning around an African country’s economy.

One school would be in an old factory in downtown Lynchburg, and the other would be in the African country of Ghana.

Thomas Johnson recently purchased 66 acres in Ghana, his home country, where he hopes to build a trade school to help the nation’s struggling economy.

Financially, Johnson is still about $2 million away from starting the schools. In terms of the tables he’s selling to raise that money, he’s about 20,000 away.

The distance to his goal doesn’t bother him. He started talking about it not long after he came to the U.S. with $20. He’s watched it come steadily closer while building furniture for local stores, hotels and homes.

Some of Johnson’s long-time associates have been impressed by his business acumen and his skill with wood.

“He’s kind of the epitome of the American dream,” said Danny Givens, of Givens Books. “He really believes in that old fashioned American dream of hard work and not making it rich fast.”

Johnson’s “American dream” started in Takoradi, the coastal Ghana town where he grew up.

As a child he watched his father build wooden truck bodies, and that sparked his interest in wood. He saw extreme poverty, and that sparked an interest in helping people.

“When I was a boy, I wanted to feed the poor Africans,” he said. “Not that I came from a rich family, but I never saw myself as poor.”

In 1987, Johnson went to Italy to study timber technology. He returned to Ghana and ran a trade school until political unrest prompted him to move to the U.S. in 1993.

About two years later a former Peace Corps volunteer Johnson had met in Ghana invited him to Lynchburg. While he was visiting he toured Liberty University and liked it. He later received a scholarship to study theology.

Johnson said he studied at Liberty for a while, but he dropped out because he didn’t want to be a pastor. He wanted to work with wood. “Jesus Christ was a carpenter,” he said.

Johnson started his business in a small shop off of Horseford Road in downtown Lynchburg. He started building kitchen cabinets and other home furnishings.

In those days he talked about going back to Ghana to help the economy there. He wanted to bring refrigeration to fishermen and teach villages how to be self-sufficient.

“Many people told me it wasn’t going to work,” Johnson said. “I liked that. When people say it’s not going to work, that’s an opportunity. If you have fewer people on the treasure island looking for treasure, you’re more likely to get the treasure.”

Bruce Johnson, a local investor (no relation), said he hired Thomas Johnson for several projects after seeing the kitchen cabinets the woodsmith had built for a friend.

He referred Thomas Johnson to others, getting him jobs building bookshelves for New Covenant Schools and Givens Books.

He said that Thomas Johnson does much of the design work in his head. “He doesn’t do all these drawings. He tells you what it’s going to look like. Some people might not be confident in that … but if you trust him, you’ll be satisfied.”

Bank of the James has contracted Johnson to make furniture for four of its branches, including the new branch going up in Altavista, said Bob Chapman, bank president.

Chapman has been impressed by some of Johnson’s business strategies. For example, he collects wood that people are throwing away and “reclaims” it.

“What’s surprising about Thomas is he takes this raw material, that looks like something that you’d find in the city dump, and he turns it into beautiful furniture,” Chapman said.

Johnson also built bedroom furniture for the Craddock-Terry hotel.

Johnson’s business has grown a lot by word of mouth. An article in the magazine Cabinet Maker in 2000 said that Johnson’s company had annual sales of $300,000.

Johnson eventually bought three old warehouses along the James River. He has eight employees, he said.

Johnson has held on to his dream of changing his home country’s economy. Central to his plan is the pair of schools that he wants to build there and in Lynchburg.

A few months ago he started selling solid walnut and cherry tables for $100 to raise money for the schools. He needs to raise $2 million to start the schools.

So far he’s sold only about 40 or 50 of the small tables. He hasn’t done a good job of marketing the idea, he said.

Raising $2 million $100 at a time is a slow process, but Johnson sees an advantage in it: if he reaches his goal, he’ll have 20,000 people who believe in his dream.

The schools would teach woodworking skills and entrepreneurial thinking. His goal is to help his students start businesses and tap into a global market for fine furniture.

He said he’s not worried about training people who could go out and be his competitors. The ocean is big, he said.

“Someday, I am going to be out of this system. I am going to die,” Johnson said. “What am I going to leave behind? Buildings. No. I want to leave behind footprints … that people like to walk in.”

“I want to leave behind followers.”