Founder's Story

Built From the Same Standards

I’m Fox Knutson, founder of Workset. I grew up in Wayzata, Minnesota, spending a lot of time in my dad’s woodworking shop. Later, playing college football reinforced a lot of the principles I still try to live by today: do what you say you’re going to do, find a way, don’t cut corners, and keep showing up when things get difficult. Those ideas eventually became the foundation for how we build Workset.

Workset started while I was a broke college student playing football in Moorhead, Minnesota. My roommates let me turn their detached garage into a small shop, using hand-me-down tools from my dad. It was freezing in the winter, brutally hot in the summer, and far from an ideal place to build hardwood cutting boards. But it taught me something that still influences every board we make: good work cannot be rushed. Early mistakes with moisture, glue, stability, sizing, and finishing forced us to slow down, study the process, and figure out what it actually takes to make a board we are willing to stand behind. That process eventually became the 55 days we use today.

As Workset grew, I realized the opportunity was bigger than simply making another premium cutting board. I couldn’t find many kitchen brands that felt built for people like us. People who train, care about what they eat, work hard at their careers and relationships, and are gradually replacing temporary purchases with fewer, better things. There were inexpensive boards, and there were beautiful artisan boards selling for hundreds of dollars, but very little that connected quality kitchenware with the way this customer actually lives.

That is who we build for today. We use American hardwood, pay attention to the details most people will never notice, and refuse to shorten the parts of the process that affect the finished product. To us, quality is doing the little things correctly even when it would be easier or more profitable not to. The goal isn’t to convince you that you need more stuff. It’s to make something worth buying when you decide it’s time to upgrade.

Cutting boards are where Workset begins, but the larger idea is simple: the things you use every day should support the standards you are setting for your life. We want to build products for people who care about their health, their work, their relationships, their homes, continuing to move forward, and build a community around those same values.

— Fox Knutson, Founder