Turning tables

Sean Woolsey vividly remembers the Christmas morning he cried because his father gave him a ping-pong table instead of a BMX bike. At the time, the 11-year-old had no clue that the table would become symbolic of his adult self. It also nurtured a special familial togetherness that Woolsey would later instill in his life, work, and business.

The original ping-pong table hosted countless games between Woolsey and his dad, a devoted creative who was “always making things” and excelled at stained glass art and film photography. Woolsey inherited his father’s artistic proclivity and grew up crafting and sewing. He eventually steered those passions into fashion design and launched and operated his surf-inspired apparel line right out of high school. He then joined the Hurley Beach brand for two years. When that position ended, he wasn’t sure what his next career move would be, but he knew he didn’t want to sit in front of a computer.

Woolsey was inspired to take a furniture class at a junior college and then attend a woodworking school. “I started buying tools and taking on custom projects,” says Woolsey. Much of what he learned about furniture making in those early years came from deconstructing other pieces. “I would reverse engineer them and see how they were made.” 

Today, Woolsey engineers a sense of play, camaraderie, and teamwork at his woodworking studio based in Costa Mesa, California. He opened it in 2010, focusing on handcrafted dining tables, coffee tables, stools, and benches. He launched his seating line a few years later and now offers a curated selection of lounge chairs, including customer favorites like the Dreamer’s Chair, an inviting wood lounger, and the Campbell series of chairs, which feature a customizable steel frame and an ancillary rocking-chair version. 

About 10 years ago, Woolsey built a custom ping-pong table so he and his team could play in the workshop. “The table was for fun,” he says. “I had hired a PR team at this time, and they got a ton of press on the Woolsey ping-pong table. It really snowballed quickly.” They sold the first one to a client in Minnesota a week later and soon started making more. 

Woolsey says timing and opportunity were everything, as his studio’s idea to bring fun and elegant design to the tables resonates with customers who want quality pieces that seamlessly blend with more modern interior schemes and colorful aesthetics. With its designs, Sean Woolsey Studio recast this category of furniture. “In particular, we lucked out that there were just a lot of very old brands of pool tables,” says Woolsey, whose innovative products filled that need in the market.

The excitement and interest in the table tennis pieces only increased in the ensuing years. Woolsey’s name is now synonymous with original, custom-crafted tables dedicated to ping pong, shuffleboard, and pool. These three items now drive most of the business, says Woolsey, who designs and crafts alongside a current staff of four other woodworking artisans. 

Sean Woolsey Studio ping-pong tables are available in various materials, such as white oak and black walnut, and base styles range from traditional to more modern-leaning designs. “The ping-pong tables can be used as dining tables as well,” says Woolsey, who notes that outdoor versions are also available. His shuffleboard tables can be made with custom conversion tops, and their line of pool tables comes in various sizes and designs.

While making ping-pong and shuffleboard tables takes less than 10 weeks, making pool tables is the most difficult and can take up to 12 weeks, says Woolsey. “Pool tables require a lot of time and precision around angles and cuts.” In the future, the studio plans to release new shuffleboard and ping-pong designs and tables for foosball and poker. “We also just launched a dartboard cabinet,” says Woolsey. 

In addition to his in-house team, Woolsey works with local welders, powder coaters, and upholsterers and takes pride in designing and producing beautiful California-crafted items for the home. The best part, he says, is sharing his West Coast pieces with fans worldwide. “We even recently air-freighted a pool table to the south of France.”

The Sean Woolsey Studio showroom, which has selected inventory on display, is often visited by customers who want to engage in creating their new furniture pieces. “People come to our studio all the time to pick out the wood,” says Woolsey, who says their hand-made items are meant to improve with time.  

Ultimately, Woolsey is thrilled to provide an aesthetically pleasing product to people who just want to have “a beautiful luxury table in the home that tells the story of what we do.” That it all started with a gift of a ping-pong table is a perfect ending.