Out of the Woodwork

What started out as a bet with his children involving TikTok has turned into a new career with hundreds of thousands of social media followers and having one of his creations displayed in the main lobby of Carhartt’s headquarters in Michigan.

It all began for Matthew Peech, of Hartford, during the Covid pandemic. His children were at home because the schools were not holding in-person classes. Some of them were taking trade classes and Peech told them that just because they were not going to school didn’t mean that their lessons were going to stop. He had them work on a couple of projects which included building a shed.

Once that was completed, other people suggested that Peech hold how-to classes for the public. With all the Covid restrictions at the time, that wasn’t possible.

He began teaching on social media platforms. The actual teaching online, however, began as an “accident” that started with a bet with his kids about TikTok.

His kids were watching TikToks and

had started uploading their own content. They kept mentioning their number of followers and the number of views they were getting. Peech jokingly bet them that he could start a TikTok and get more views than all of them put together.

Knowing he couldn’t do any of the viral trends circulating on the platform, his kids asked what he planned to upload.

“I told them I was going to teach people,” Peech said.

That is how Peech became a content creator which eventually led to his designing the art piece for Carhartt.

Peech originally began by recording basic life skills on his cell phone for TikTok.

“If these kids are going to be stuck at home watching TikToks (during the pandemic) maybe they can learn something,” Peech thought about his early content.

His early videos were basic how-to’s, he said. He is a self-proclaimed Jack-of-all-trades and he would just video himself doing things around the house.

Peech has always had a love for woodworking. His family owned a sawmill when he was younger. He grew up around wood manufacturing. As a kid, he said, he had always been interested in woodworking as a hobby.

“There’s just something about taking a bunch of nothing and creating something. It just always intrigued me.”

Peech worked for the family business until his early 20s and then worked as a registered nurse for 15 years before becoming a full-time content creator a little over a year ago. But, he always did woodworking on the side as a hobby or what he called a “side hustle” that brought in extra money for family vacations and Christmas gifts.

Peech began to post basic woodworking videos about how to use individual tools.

“Those videos did really well and it kind of took off,” he said.

Following the success of those videos, a few people asked Peech to do more in-depth videos and put them on YouTube because of the time constraints of TikTok videos.

That is how the Matthew Peech Woodworking YouTube channel began.

“It just caught on and that’s how I got started doing this,” Peech said. “It’s crazy how fast the (YouTube) channel grew.”

To date, his videos have been viewed over 300 million times. He has 442,000 YouTube followers, 285,000 on TikTok, 154,00 on Instragram and 240,000 on Facebook.

The company Carhartt was one of those noticing Peech on TikTok.

“Carhartt noticed that I wore my old bibs in almost every video and reached out and talked about sponsoring me with clothing,” Peech said.

They became one of his original sponsors when he was just on TikTok and eventually began supporting his YouTube channel as well. That grew into having him actually create content for them on their platforms.

“I just got to know all the contacts (with the company) and they got to know me. They really loved my style and my mission statement and the type of woodworking I teach and the type of woodworking that is my passion that I call my passion projects,” he said.

Through getting to know them, an opportunity came up where Carhartt was remodeling their headquarters in Michigan. He was asked by the company if he was interested in creating a wooden art piece for the lobby.

Peech began the project in April and shipped it at the end of the summer. It was displayed in September, and earlier this month Peech traveled to see it first-hand.

When designing the piece the only guidelines Peech had was that it had to have the Carhartt logo and it had to be a certain size. The piece measures almost four feet tall. He was given complete artistic freedom on the project, he said.

Carhartt has been around since the late 1800s. Its original intent was supporting the trades. Their first clothing was for railroad workers. The company’s original logo was a heart and a railroad car. That’s how they came up with the name “Car-Heart,” according to Peech.

“I was trying to think of a way to fuse the original logo in with the logo they have now – the original history with this piece of art,” he said.

Peech loves reclaimed wood and its history. He used some of his own personal inventory of reclaimed wood to create the finished product. It is made from a mixture of 100-plus-year-old emerald poplar and longleaf heart pine from local structures that were dismantled by Peech’s family. The poplar was reclaimed from a historic train station and the longleaf heart of pine from a prohibition bourbon barrel house.

“I chose this material for the logo as I felt it perfectly portrayed the bond of the original Carhartt logo,” Peech said. A train car within a heart.

Peech also wanted to intertwine his own personal history in the piece, he said.

“From reclaiming the wood with my family to the saw blades from the sawmill that I grew up in, and all of the hard work and life lessons that came along with it ... memories,” Peech is quoted as saying on a plaque that accompanies the art piece at the headquarters.

Carhartt has already approached him about doing more work for them.

“So to me, Carhartt isn’t just a brand ... they are a part of my past, my present and now my future ... all combined to add chapters to my story ... the story of me.”

Peech doesn’t want praise for his work or his social media success, he is just proud that Hartford’s name is specifically mentioned on the plaque in Michigan.