I live about 10 miles from the Craft Supplies USA store. I have visited many times over the past several years ... for demos, open houses, even a turning class. Imagine my initial surprise when I realized that one of the premier woodturning establishments was right in my backyard!
Things get rearranged gradually over time, but HERE (
http://www.bbburma.net/SatellitePics/CraftSuppliesUSA_Annotated.jpg) is a satellite photo of the Craft Supplies "campus" that I have annotated to the best of my knowledge. The showroom is not much bigger than the gray square (Google Earth position indicator) overlaid on the SW corner of the main building. The cash registers and "front office" take up a similar portion of the SE corner. Someone who works there could supply more details about what occupies that bulk of the main building. (Small call center? An order fulfillment stock room with the most-frequently-ordered items? I know there is a conference room upstairs, because that's where the introductions happened when I took that turning class in '03.)
During the Symposium some dramatic changes take place:
- 1) Most available space in the outlying buildings is employed for demos, many by famous turners.
2) The whole "campus" is full of interested (and interesting) people watching demos, moving between demos, or just milling around talking to each other.
3) The diminutive showroom / front office area is CRAMMED with symposium attendees (or people like me who just drop in for the demos) trying to buy "one of these" or "two of those". The vast majority of CSUSA's business is conducted via phone & web orders, so normal (NON-symposium) foot traffic is comparatively non-existent.
4) The temporary Clearance Sale area opens to a large group of early birds, and the best deals go fast.
5) Parking in the area is quite scarce for a couple days. If I'm not mistaken, CSUSA provides some sort of shuttle service to and from the BYU campus during the symposium.
As someone else mentioned, the show room display only hints at the variety of items that are available. It consists mostly of gouges, chucks, sharpening systems, a few books, a decent selection of kits for pens and similar projects, and a mini lathe or two. In the center is a glass display case (containing some cool-looking stuff) with a stack of printed catalogs and a stack of order forms on top. You fill out a form, hand it to a clerk, and they disappear through a door to fill your order. Meanwhile, you wait ... and engage in pleasant conversation with other attendees of course!
To the west of the main CSUSA building, on the other side of the empty lot, is a new building. It houses TreeLine (
http://www.treelineusa.com/) ... another Nish family business which caters to the wood carving/burning/painting crowd. TreeLine started out in a bay of one of the CSUSA "Inventory Storage" buildings. I haven't visited the new building yet, but I'm glad to see that the venture is gathering steam. It makes sense ... after all, woodturning and "wood embellishing" go hand in hand!