Sarasota-based Amish furniture exec helps build $3M Amazon channel

Marina de Sa Nogueira didn’t end up at Sarasota-based Amish-made solid wood furniture brand DutchCrafters because of a passion for furniture or wood or even interior design. 

No, after graduating from University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee with a marketing degree in 2017, she found a job listing for DutchCrafters and liked what she saw, value-wise: community-based, sustainability, committed to excellence. 

Photo by Mark Wemple

The firm hired her as an assistant for the product management team, and at the time, the business had a burgeoning market on Amazon that was largely untapped. There were a few listings up, minimal information, not enough to really entice a buyer. Her then-boss suggested she keep an eye on the account, and de Sa Nogueira saw an opportunity. 

“I started paying more attention to that account, putting more effort into it, and it quickly started to perform well,” de Sa Nogueira says. “I’d like to refer to it as just luck, but I guess I did something right.” 

Doing something right entailed doing a little bit of everything — de Sa Nogueira first had to identify potential products that would be a good candidate for the immense packaging and delivery deadlines of Amazon, like bird feeders or outdoor poly furniture, and contact the vendors to get them on board. She handled purchase orders and customer service issues. Working for DutchCrafters also brought with it some built-in difficulties. 

“Our products are Amish-made, so the Amish don’t really use the Internet,” de Sa Nogueira says. “I had to explain what Amazon was, why I thought their product was a good fit for it and just really kind of get that ball rolling.” 

Within two years, the DutchCrafters Amazon channel had surpassed $1 million in revenue — fostered mostly by de Sa Nogueira. That revenue stream has since grown to $3 million, and de Sa Nogueira, a native of Portugal, has grown into some new roles, too. That includes being promoted to managing marketing for the entire company, hoping to spread the word about Amish furniture “to the entire nation,” she says. She credits DutchCrafters CEO Jim Miller with helping her grow her own professional profile. (de Sa Nogueira has not only been promoted, but she also won DutchCrafters President’s Award, what Miller calls the company’s “most coveted honor.”) 

“Sometimes you’re at that age where you’re trying to figure things out and you think you’re confident, but you don’t really see it in yourself either,” she says. “But he’s really pulled it out of me and he believes in me every day.”