History & Mission
APOC designs and makes high quality products out of raw materials with
a local history. Our efforts have rescued tons of doors, floors and
lumber from houses destined for the landfill.
While researching models of deconstruction throughout the country,
Chris Kious began to visualize saleable products being made out of
reclaimed materials. Not being a craftsman himself, he needed to
find fabricators and woodworkers to help upcycle and rebirth the
salvaged building materials.
Within weeks of coming to this conclusion, Kious met PJ Doran and his
shop-mate Aaron Gogolin. With well over twenty years combined
woodworking experience, they both already had a long standing interest
in working with old wood. Gogolin and Doran were easily convinced of
the value of collaboration, and the group moved forward with some initial
sample pieces. Soon though, they realized that they were going to need
to be able to produce things in quantity to handle the volume of material
that would be coming in. They needed a skilled and experienced designer
on board to help them conceptualize these products.
Almost a week after this realization, the group had found its final
partner, Ezra Taxel. A trained professional designer and sometimes
fabricator, Taxel was completely excited about the concept of APOC, and
loved the idea of working in collaboration with other woodworkers. In
January of 2008 Chris, PJ, Aaron and Ezra had established themselves as
the core of this project and formalized their partnership in A Piece Of
Cleveland llc. APOC creates excitement wherever people hear about it
and has been growing steadily from the minute it was formed.
