Our story
It started with a board and a promise.
Purpose Wood Co. began as a small handmade board brand with one promise: the work would give back. People bought the boards, then asked for bigger pieces, then for the wall of shelves behind the table. It grew into a shop spanning lumber, goods, furniture, and millwork, and into Purpose Design+Build.
The beginning
One board at a time.
Purpose Wood began as a small brand making charcuterie and serving boards by hand. The promise from the start was plain. The work would give back, with profits going to causes and reinvested into something that mattered. People bought the boards. Then they asked for bigger pieces. Then they asked who could build the wall of shelves behind the table. The shop kept growing because the work kept asking it to.
Tree to home
From boards to buildings.
To make better boards we needed better wood, so we started milling and drying our own. To handle bigger requests we started building furniture and built-ins. And when projects got big enough to need walls opened and rooms installed, Purpose Design+Build was born to carry them. What started as a board brand became one shop that follows wood the whole way, from the tree to the home.
We never set out to be a family of businesses. We set out to follow one piece of wood as far as it could go.
The family
Two names, one standard.
PURPOSE WOOD+CO. is the material and product brand. The slabs, the boards, the custom furniture, and the shop made millwork. Purpose Design+Build is the build company for full installed projects. Same hands, same traced wood, same promise to give back. When you hire one, you get the standard of both.
Who makes it
Real people, at a real bench.
This is a small Chicago shop. The person who answers your inquiry is the person who picks your slab and the person who runs the saw. No call center, no middlemen, no outsourced anything. Steve Larosiliere founded it, and that is on purpose too.