Revival Millworks is carving out new future for Bay Area manufacturing
Revival Millworks employee Walter Mendoza grinds a new template blade to use for milling wood pieces at the Revival Millworks workshop in Livermore. Revival, founded in 2023, relies on tools it acquired from the 156-year-old White Brothers Mill.
Adam Pardee
At the turn of the 20th century, White Brothers Mill helped build back San Francisco. Now, a new venture is tapping into its legacy to show how manufacturing has a future in the 21st-century Bay Area.
The White Brothers lumberyard was spared from the devastation of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, which killed 3,000 and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. That made it the only supplier of hardwood lumber left standing in the region. Despite having a temporary monopoly on the market, White Brothers opted to not raise prices. Instead, it helped rebuild the city and in particular its famous Victorian homes.
More than a century and a half later, the legacy of White Brothers lives on through Revival Millworks, a Livermore-based manufacturer that opened its doors last year. After White Brothers, which moved from San Francisco to Oakland in 1948, closed this year after a century and a half in business, Revival’s Brad Erickson saw the opportunity to buy up the historic company’s thousands of moulding profile knives.
Revival Millworks owner Brad Erickson saw an opportunity to pick up White Brothers' catalog of patterns and tools to make them.
Adam Pardee
Those are the crucial tools used to create the distinctive woodwork that defines the look of the region’s Victorians — and Erickson wielded them effectively to build his business. The purchase effectively doubled sales for Revival Millworks, he said, and brought in a Rolodex of loyal clients that had worked with White Brothers for decades.
“I have so much respect for (White Brothers) and the legacy they created,” Erickson said. “I think that everybody, all the customers, are so bummed that they’re not there anymore because they really created a great atmosphere.“
Revival Millworks produces wood products for everything from historic home restoration projects to new tech campuses across Silicon Valley. It is one of few remaining millwork shops in the Bay Area that can bring century-old designs back to life with the tools of the time period. It’s also one of many traditional manufacturers navigating economic headwinds and an evolving workforce — a reminder that the region’s manufacturing sector embraces many kinds of businesses, not just cleantech and biotech.
“The Bay Area is one of the only places where a specialty millwork shop like us can operate and do custom mouldings,” Erikson said. “The Bay Area is unique in the sense of where it’s got a lot of affluence, and people care about the craftsmanship.”
Acquiring the White Brothers designs and tools gave the company a leg up, as creating moulding profile knives from scratch is time-consuming and expensive, and growing a large inventory can take years.
The knives are loaded onto a wheel inside a moulder machine that spins at roughly 7,000 rotations per minute to carve the wood. Each knife creates a different pattern. Revival can now produce thousands of patterns unique to the Bay Area, like those seen on San Francisco’s Painted Ladies, Erickson said.
The laser machine used to cut templates that will be used to mill wood pieces for restoration projects at the Revival Millworks workshop in Livermore on Oct. 3, 2024.
Adam Pardee
The White Brothers catalog wasn’t his only savvy purchase. Erickson has been accumulating used equipment from auctions over the years — including a multi ripsaw that came from San Quentin.
Erickson opened Revival Millworks’ nearly 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Livermore last year — a location he chose for its lower crime rates, good-value rents and access to both San Francisco and Sacramento-area builders.
Livermore has become a hotbed for manufacturing companies, said Brandon Cardwell, the city’s director of innovation and economic development. Manufacturing accounts for 11% of all jobs in Livermore, and the city identified the sector as a critical part of its strategic plan to enhance the local economy.
“Manufacturing companies provide high-quality jobs across the spectrum of education levels, often generate sales tax and they are typically export businesses that import wealth into the communityand increase resiliency,” Cardwell said.
An old banister is seen near blueprints and laser-cut templates used to mill wood pieces for restoration projects at the Revival Millworks workshop in Livermore on Oct. 3, 2024.
Adam Pardee
The manufacturing industry offers some of the highest starting wages for jobs that do not require a college degree at $21.03 an hour nationally. They’re higher at $24.78 an hour in the Bay Area, said Jefferson McCarley, chief project officer for SF Made, a resource hub for Bay Area manufacturers, according to a survey of San Francisco firms.
McCarley is bullish on the Bay Area’s manufacturing sector as an industry leader and hub for innovation. Fifty-seven companies, the majority of which were new businesses, joined the organization last year, he said.
“I think that ever since the days of inventing jeans and ground coffee, San Francisco has been the place for ideas to come to light — and that hasn’t changed,” McCarley said.
One prevailing challenge has been recruitment, Erickson said. Finding skilled workers trained in the trade is getting harder now that the younger generation are gravitating toward technology-related manufacturing, and the number of millwork shops is decreasing. He’s had to rely on word of mouth and referrals from former co-workers to staff his workshop.
A library of wood templates and their associated blades used to mill wood pieces for restoration projects at the Revival Millworks workshop in Livermore on Oct. 3, 2024.
Adam Pardee
“A lot of them like White Brothers shut down,” Erickson said.
But demand is only increasing.
Erickson said the company works on roughly 50 to 100 projects a month and produces between 20,000 and 30,000 linear feet of moulding per week. Revival has supplied more than $150,000 worth of wood for an outdoor pergola at the home of one Bay Area tech mogul, and refurbished a 150-year-old home in Mendocino. He’d love to say more, but some projects involving high-profile individuals or companies require him to sign nondisclosure agreements.
“The Bay Area and some of these tech tycoons we have here, they want the best of the best,” Erickson said. “And so for us to be able to source really unique materials and mill all kinds of crazy profiles, it’s pretty fun.”
Revival Millworks employees Walter Mendoza, Simon Silvestre, Marlon Mejia, Froilan Mendoza and owners Brad Erickson and Sara Erickson, pose for a photo inside the Revival Millworks workshop in Livermore, Calif. on Oct. 3, 2024.
Adam Pardee