John Greco’s Hand Crafted Pens

When pending government regulations forced Sewell, NJ resident John Greco to close his toy business earlier this year, he was understandably disappointed. Woodworking is Greco’s passion; crafting custom children’s toys from his home workshop was the perfect job for a stay-at-home dad.

But Greco landed on his feet quickly, diverting the focus of his company from toy-making to pen-making. The result is that Greco Woodcrafting has found success. The custom pen business is doing well, and Greco’s products are in high demand as orders pour in through his company’s website and Facebook page.

It wasn’t what he had envisioned doing, but Greco loves his job. “I just started making the pens in March, and it’s really taken off extremely well,” he said. “I was fortunate that I was able to use a lot of the skills that I had already acquired as a woodworker to make the pens, and through some good word-of-mouth referrals, it’s just been building and building.”

Greco, 37, hand-makes pens to his customers’ desires, using a wide variety of exotic woods, each with painstaking attention to details. Take Greco’s limited edition run of pens carried for the Philadelphia Independence Seaport Museum. Limited to just 125 pieces, these pens are made from dock wood salvaged from beneath the Walt Whitman Bridge.

“I was searching and searching trying to find some dock wood from along the Delaware River, because the museum is largely about the history of shipping on the Delaware and I wanted to make something for them to carry in their gift shop,” Greco said. “I found a lumber yard in Manayunk [PA] that had almost entirely salvaged wood. This guy had two boards left from when the Walt Whitman Bridge was renovated in the mid-nineties… so I took both pieces.”

The Seaport Museum and its guests were thrilled with Greco’s subsequent creations.

That was the point when Greco realized the opportunity he had — take custom pen orders from customers who had wood they wanted transformed into a pen. “That opened up a whole new aspect of the business for me,” he said.

Greco soon began taking other custom pen orders. One was from a customer remembering a tree that had fallen, another from a business owner using wood from wine casks to remind customers of a trip they had taken to wineries. Whatever the reason, Greco was happy to oblige “It really gives my business that niche kind of aspect,” he said.

Originally from Bergen County, NJ, Greco attended Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey) with plans to become a shop teacher. He abandoned that plan when he realized he wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility of supervising students working with dangerous tools, especially as he thought back to his middle school shop days.

Before long, Greco envisioned a day when he would own a toy shop “I started to get this image in my head of having a small toy shop, where I’m in the back making toys, and kids could come in and there would be a glass window where they could look through and watch the toys being made.”

He decided to do it in 2008, when his daughter’s toys kept being recalled with safety problems. Cranking out cars, trucks, planes and more, Greco was pleased to be able to offer a fun and safe product that kids could enjoy and parents could trust.

“What I didn’t know at the time was that Congress was passing the CPSIA, or the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act,” he said. “It essentially puts testing burdens on any toy manufacturer, and it treats people like me the same that it treats companies like Mattel.”

For Greco to be able to sell toys, the new rules called for him to send 12 copies of each toy to a lab for testing. “For me, where one batch was maybe only eight to 10 toys, I’d have to make multiple batches just to be sent off to be tested and destroyed,” he said.

It wasn’t economically feasible for Greco. He still makes toys for his daughter Kaitlyn, 6, and son Christopher, 3, but not to sell.

Greco tried making tools for looms for a weaver and considered other possibilities. He got by with a few odd jobs. One day, as he struggled to find a use for his lathe, the idea that he should make custom pens came to him. “I’ve been a longtime pen collector, so it was really a very natural fit for me to get into making the pens.”

Now, Greco still makes a few executive toys for adults, and he also takes custom orders that are not pen-related, but the focus of his business is to make pens. “This is my full-time thing,” he said. “I do take custom orders, so my time isn’t always spent making pens, but that’s definitely the majority of it. As with most people who do turning on a lathe, I am interested in making just about anything you can turn on a lathe. It’s kind of an addictive tool.”

Now that Greco’s kids are in school and his role as a stay-at-home dad has become less intensive, he can devote more time to his business.

He’s traveled a winding road, but at the end Greco found his dream job and is here to stay. “I don’t ever want to retire,” he said. “I don’t plan on stopping. Until the day I die, I’m going to be doing this.”

To learn more about Greco and his custom pens, visit his website at www.grecowoodcrafting.com. You can also find Greco Woodcrafting on Facebook.