CULLMAN, Ala. – The earthy scent of pine fills your nose when you walk into the quaint building along Alabama Highway 157 West. Urban Pine Co. in Cullman County first opened the doors of its brick and mortar store in April 2019, but its roots date back a lot farther than that.
Mother-daughter duo Ann Couch and Tammy Hill own Urban Pine Co., which designs and builds handcrafted goods and furniture.
Hill shared the beginnings of the family’s endeavor, saying “Twenty years ago, I’m a dental hygienist. Once I started having a family, I decided that I wanted to stay home more with kids, so I worked part-time in the office and mother and I started this little business. Of course she had it way longer than even that, because we did this when I was growing up at home. My parents had other jobs, but we did this as a little side hustle to always earn money for trips or cars or college or whatever we needed money for. We’ve always done this; my dad has built birdhouses for over 40 years, but a just a couple of years ago we decided to do Urban Pine and we travel and do shows. We’ve been doing shows for 20 years and we go as far north as Nashville all the way to Birmingham, the Atlanta area and all the way to Mississippi, so we kind of stay within that radius doing shows and selling our goods.”
She continued, “This year, we had this opportunity with this cute little building. This land was farmed at one time, but somebody from my church family owned the building, so we’ve redone the building and made it really cute and decided as of April this year we opened this little shop, because we are local; mother is from Jones Chapel, I live in Vinemont. We’re just a family business. My husband builds the furniture, my dad builds the birdhouses, mother and I do all the finishing work on all of the furniture and we go to markets and buy all of our cute little stuff to go with it. You know our farmhouse tables and our bed swings, we custom make that for our customers. But we decided we would open a little shop and stay local, just kind of simple Southern charm.”
Hill also explained the name, Urban Pine: “Where that came from, we just kind of liked it; we thought it was catchy and unique. We do everything pretty much with pine that we build.”
Aside from building unique furniture, Urban Pine also offers T-shirts, with all proceeds from shirt sales going back into the community into local charities and memorial funds.
Hill explained, “Our little shirts that we sell, the profits go into a local charity. We call that ‘Pine with a Purpose: Praying it Forward.’ Depending on the sales of the shirts, we try to do it every month or every couple of months we donate to somebody local any profits from our shirts. So not only does that advertise for our little company, but it also helps to give back to the community.”
Urban Pine’s hand-crafted merchandise is one of a kind, with two products being the most popular.
“The farmhouse tables with the benches and the bed swings, or we call them Sunday Swings, because they’re great napping on Sundays swings. We have people come in and ask for certain things and we try to accommodate that; right now, we’re building a farmhouse table that’s 7 feet long and they wanted it custom on the ends so they could put chairs on each end,” said Hill. “We try to do for people to come in and have a special request, because we are building it and nothing is ever going to be alike, no two things will ever be alike, they’re always going to be unique and different, just like the birdhouses. None of them are ever the same. They’re always different, so I think that’s kind of unique, that’s a unique thing about us, because we custom make things and we’re building it as we go, everything never looks the same and the paint’s never going to take the same, the stain’s going to be different, and I think that’s what people like about us. They like that we try to be good people and we try to give back and we gift wrap for free and we just try to do some custom things that people won’t find in a big name brand store.”
Hill said with a smile, “We’re just a family business. We say simple Southern charm and everything’s kind of unique and handmade and different. We have some things that are not handmade, you know our pumpkins and our wreaths, but we just put that with it to make it all cute.
Urban Pine Co. is located at 7321 Alabama Highway 157, Cullman, AL 35057. The store is open Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Find out more at www.urbanpinecompany.com or www.facebook.com/urbanpinecompany.
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