Live-Edge Italian Olive Wood Charcuterie Board Paxter Beam: Buy One of My Last 200 Boards at £87 Instead of £200 for Father's Day and Save My Workshop

My name is Giuseppe Bertolino. I am 61 years old. I work alone in a small workshop in Alba, in the Piedmont hills of northern Italy, and I cut serving boards from olive trees that no longer bear fruit. My father started this trade in 1965, traveling south to Apulia to recover trees the farmers had given up on. I took it over from him.

Four winters ago, the Apulia supplier doubled his rates and my daughter started university in Bologna. I tried to grow the workshop. I trusted three marketing agencies. They took £54,000 over 28 months and brought me 11 customers. I said to my wife Carla last December, I have been a fool, and the bank knows it.

So today I am writing this letter to you. I have 200 olive wood boards left in the back of the workshop. For Father's Day, I am selling them directly at £87 each, the wholesale cost I would have charged a retailer like Williams-Sonoma. They normally retail for £200 and I cannot afford to gamble on more advertising.

If you read what follows, you will understand the olive trees, the work, the math, and why this is the only way I have left.

I did not choose olive wood. Olive wood chose me. My father Pietro put a small chisel in my hand the summer I turned 9, and I have never set it down since.

In 1965 my father started traveling from Alba down to Apulia, buying up olive trees the farmers were uprooting because they had stopped bearing fruit. I rode with him on those summer trips from the age of 12. He taught me to read the grain, to listen to the rasp, to wait.

He said to me one evening near Bari, An olive tree stops bearing fruit at 100 years. That is when I start working with her wood. She has more to give. You just need to know how to listen.

I took over the workshop in 1998 when his back gave out. Doctors, lawyers, restaurant owners in Turin and Milan have been buying my boards for 28 years. Some of them are on their second and third board for their grown children. A board lasts a lifetime if you oil her every spring.

In March 2022, an agency from Milan called D.S. Digital came to Alba in suits. They promised to bring olive wood lovers from America to my website. I signed a 6-month contract. I paid them £18,000 upfront. After 6 months, my Google traffic had dropped from 41 visitors a day to 38. I had sold 4 boards.

I sat in the workshop that September night with the invoice in my hands. I said out loud, Pietro, I have failed you. I am not a young man anymore. £18,000 is 2 years of supplier payments. I felt sick.

I did not tell my wife for 3 weeks. I worked longer hours at the bench, sanding boards by myself until midnight. Carla noticed I had stopped eating dinner with her. She said nothing. She just left a plate covered with a cloth on the workshop step every evening.

One Tuesday morning in October I took down my father's old chisel from the wall. I sat with it on my knees for a long time before I started working again. I oiled it with the same linseed oil he used. The handle was worn smooth from his hand.

I told myself, The wood is honest. The wood does not lie. I will keep working. But I also called another agency. P.C. Performance in Rome. They promised social media campaigns. They took £22,000 over 14 months. They posted 9 sponsored Instagram videos. I sold 5 boards.

For 2 years I bled money to people in office buildings I had never seen. The third agency, L.A. Reach in Brooklyn, ran Facebook ads for 8 months. Of 200,000 impressions, 31 boards sold. I had paid them £14,000.

By the end of last winter I had 200 finished boards stacked on the workshop shelves. Each one I had hand-finished myself, oiled with 3 coats of linseed, wrapped in cotton cloth. Every board waiting for someone to find her.

To understand why I cannot let these boards go to Williams-Sonoma at wholesale and have them resold for £200, you have to understand what is in my hands when I work.

The wood I cut comes from olive trees between 80 and 150 years old. When a tree stops bearing fruit, the farmer in Apulia uproots her. The grain at that age has swirled in on itself for a century. It looks like a frozen storm. It is dense like horn.

I tell my customers, Your knife does not scar this wood. It slides on it. Olive grain is self-healing. The fibers close back over a small cut within hours. It does not stain like maple. It does not warp like bamboo when you wash her.

Here is how I make each board, from the truck arriving in the courtyard to the cotton cloth at the end.

First I cut a single live-edge slab from the trunk. No glue, no joining, no plywood. The slab dries in my barn for 14 months, turning every month. Then I plane her by hand at 12 degrees Celsius in the cold room so the grain stays tight. I sand her through 6 grits over 2 days. I finish her with food-safe Tuscan linseed oil, 3 coats, rubbed in with a cotton rag, drying 48 hours between coats.

Each board takes me about 9 hours of bench work over 3 weeks. The last thing I do is wrap her in unbleached cotton cloth and rest her on the workshop shelf with the others, ready to ship when someone calls.

On 14 February of this year, my accountant Lorenzo sat across the kitchen table from me with the books open. He said, Giuseppe, you owe the bank £39,000 plus the supplier £11,000. The workshop loses money every month you keep paying agencies.

He said, If you do not stop this in the next 6 months, you will sell the workshop in 2027 to cover the debt. You will lose your father's bench and the courtyard your wife was born across the street from.

I had not been sleeping. My back was worse than at any time in 28 years. I had not invoiced a personal salary in 11 months. I was eating bread and tomatoes at the bench, alone, because dinner with Carla felt like lying.

Carla saw 3 things that month. She saw me hide an unopened bank envelope in the firewood. She saw me wear the same shirt 4 days in a row. She saw me stop calling our daughter at university.

She said to me on a Sunday in March, Your father did not work 40 years in the Apulian sun so you could lose his workshop to a man in a suit in Rome.

I sat with that line for 9 days. It hurt because Carla was right. Pietro had taught me to read olive grain, not contracts. I had trusted strangers with what he gave me, and they had taken the money and walked.

On 22 March, at 6 in the morning, I sat with Lorenzo at the workshop and we made a decision in 2 parts. No more agencies, ever. Sell the 200 finished boards direct to customers, at the wholesale price I would have given a retailer, and rebuild from the bench up.

Last month, a buyer from a chain that competes with Williams-Sonoma called me from New York. He offered me a price per board that would have just covered my supplier cost. They would have stickered the boards at £249 in their stores. He wanted all 200.

I said no. I would rather burn the boards in the courtyard than watch a buyer in a Manhattan office mark them up 3 times and sell them as just another premium item. These are not premium items. They are old Apulian trees that gave 100 years of fruit, finished by my hands.

So I am offering them direct to anyone reading this letter. £87 per board, my own wholesale cost, the same I would have charged the chain. No middleman, no Manhattan markup, no retail tag. For Father's Day, I am putting one in the hands of the man who actually carved her instead of a stockroom clerk.

When the 200 are gone, they are gone. I will not be making another batch at this price. I cannot afford to. I have to pay the supplier and the bank, and then I have to go back to the bench and start fresh.

This is not a markdown. There is no doorbuster, no countdown gimmick. It is one craftsman in Alba asking the people who care about real olive wood to buy direct, so the workshop survives another year, and your father has a board he can be proud of on Sunday.

Since this letter went out 6 weeks ago, 4 food magazines in Italy have written about the workshop. A local newspaper in Alba asked to do a feature. Last Tuesday, the Piedmont Crafts Council called and offered me an honorary medal for 28 years of olive wood work.

I told them no, gently. A medal does not pay the bank, and a medal does not put a board on a father's table this June. The only honor I want now is for the 200 boards to find homes.

There are 200 boards on the shelves behind me right now. When they are gone, they are gone. I will not be cutting another batch at this price. The supplier in Apulia has raised his rates again this autumn, and I have to clear the bank debt before I can buy more wood.

Each board is £87 instead of the £200 a board like this would carry at Williams-Sonoma or Boos. It is not a markdown. It is the wholesale cost I would have charged a chain buyer, given direct to you for Father's Day.

I pack every board myself in cotton cloth and a Piedmont pine crate. 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions, if the board does not feel right in your father's hands.

Some of the early Father's Day buyers have already received their boards. Their first reactions are below.

As I write this on a Tuesday morning, 78 boards have already left the workshop in the last 9 days. The shelves are emptying faster than I expected. By the time you finish reading, that number is probably lower.

These boards are for the wife buying a Father's Day gift she does not have to apologize for, for the daughter who remembers a real cutting board on her father's table, and for the man who has cracked a Williams-Sonoma board in 3 winters.