Did you know? 12 little known facts about CedarWorks and CedarWorks playsets

Life at CedarWorks  |  4 years ago

You may not know much about CedarWorks. After all, we are a small playset company way up in Maine, but we are fun and a little bit quirky. We love what we do, and we are proud of the beautiful playsets we make. A few things worth knowing:

1. CedarWorks is a family-owned company that has been owned and operated by the same family for over 30 years.

2. The posts on our indoor playbeds and playsets are made Ash. Ash is a hardwood that is popular for fine furniture. Because of its durability, Ash is also commonly used in Major League Baseball bats.

3. We ship playsets as far away as China and Russia, but the closest we have ever shipped a product was a two story playhouse we used a tractor to move to its new location at a childcare facility down the street.

4. We have sold playsets and playhouses to celebrities in virtually every industry you can think of including Super Bowl champs, World Series winners, reality TV stars, best-selling writers, Oscar and Grammy winners, and at least one EGOT.*

5. Every year, we donate 10% of our profits to organizations and events that support kids and the environment.

6. All of our outdoor products use Northern White Cedar which is naturally splinter-free, and it doesn’t need any paints or stains.

7. Since we don’t use any chemical treatments, paints, or stains on our cedar, we can use our wood scraps to help heat our manufacturing plant.

8. Every year we use more than 10 miles worth of rope on our swings and rope ladders.

9. Every February, CedarWorks employees compete against each other in the “Duncan Cup”, a candlepin bowling challenge. Candlepin bowling with its skinny, straight pins, small balls, and weird scoring system is unique to northern New England and Maritime Canada. There are fewer than 50 candlepin bowling alleys left in New England, but one is less than a mile down the street from our office in Rockport, Maine. 

10. Each CedarWorks employee gets to choose their favorite cake to celebrate their birthday. This simple tradition has become so popular, we include it as a benefit in our help wanted ads.

11. We have a small pond next to our office (you can see it in the background of some of our catalog and website photos) where we get regular sightings of deer, geese, turkeys, and the occasional beaver.

12. Back in the olden days (also known as the 80s) we offered a handful of outdoor swing sets. Now we have about a dozen product lines representing indoor and outdoor, playsets and playhouses, commercial and residential products, toys and furniture. Most of our playsets and playhouses are modular and designed to be customized, so we honestly don’t even know how many possible variations on our products you could design. Thousands? More?

*EGOT = Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony