Shoreline building business one custom job at a time

The Memphis Daily News/The Memphis News

Nov. 25, 2013

You may not be aware of the creations of Shoreline Custom Woodworks, yet you may very well have placed your beer down on one of their bar tops, eaten a favorite entrée from a tabletop or maybe even passed a bid proposal across a custom-made conference table.

From a 30,000-square-foot warehouse next door to Wayne’s Candy Co. in Downtown Memphis, Shoreline Custom Woodworks owner Jason Ramirez and his team are churning out custom furniture, cabinets, molding, wood flooring and signage of birch, walnut, maple, cypress and exotic woods at an impressive rate.

Shoreline Custom Woodworks churns out custom furniture, cabinets, molding, wood flooring and signage of numerous woods around town.

(Photo: Andrew J. Breig)

Ramirez, 36, learned his trade from a family friend growing up in California. The friend’s business was called Shoreline Construction and, though there is no affiliation, Ramirez wanted to show his appreciation for his mentor.

“I started out real young and worked with him through high school,” Ramirez said.

In 1997, after a stint in the Army, Ramirez moved to Memphis, where his parents had relocated for work. He met his future wife, decided to stay and joined the Memphis Fire Department, where he still works with Engine 48. He began Shoreline in a 3,000-square-foot space off Pleasant View Road in 2008. It was a shop just large enough to handle the smaller jobs of a side business.

When he met Mark Beck, the foreman who runs the shop with him, Ramirez said, “we decided we wanted to take it to another caliber.”

An investment was made in more machinery such as a 5-by-10-foot CNC router, which allows Ramirez to create a design on the computers in his office and have it realized on the production floor . . . (read more)