Pine Barren Pallet Works opens store

Kristin Guglietti/THG Pine Barren Pallet Works owners Patrick Bilazzo and Carlina Sacco opened their store located at 300 12th Street on July 7.

Pine Barren Pallet Works started in Patrick Bilazzo’s parents’ garage and would later become a storefront at 300 12th Street, which opened on July 7.

The idea for a place to build custom furniture and wood art started a few years ago when Bilazzo built a coffee table for himself that his partner, Carlina Sacco listed on Facebook Marketplace. The coffee table sold overnight.

The person who bought the coffee table came back to order custom end tables for his living room, which helped Bilazzo realize he could build things for a living.

“If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if I would have had courage to actually pursue this,” Bilazzo said.

While Sacco was in college at Rutgers New Brunswick, she would come home on the weekends and mess with Bilazzo’s scraps from the woodshop, which she would turn into mosaics.

“I would go in the woodshop while he’s dabbling in stuff and I started messing around with his scraps and then I started making mosaics because I wanted to make one for my best friend who graduated college. She still has it,” Sacco said.

After she graduated, she talked with her parents and decided to continue being a maker.

Things were going well until a fire in 2021 destroyed the shed they were working in. They were not able to rebuild in Mullica Twp., so they took the donations received from the community and decided to start the Pine Barren Makers Fest.

The next Pine Barren Makers Fest will be held at 3610 Nesco Rd. from September 23-24.

Sacco said last year they had about 80 vendors, and this year they will have over 120 vendors.

“We brought in around 10,000 people throughout the whole weekend, so this year we’re hoping to have more,” Sacco said.

The location for their storefront was found after handing out flyers for last year’s Pine Barren Makers Fest. After finding the location, they were able to contact the owners of the building and found out they were moving.

“I feel like this location is probably the only location if you walk all of Bellevue to where we could possibly have a woodshop and make noise and a storefront in front of it, so we lucked out with that,” Bilazzo said.

Once they move the workshop, there will be a window inside Pine Barren Pallet Works where customers can see them working while shopping.

“We always had a dream of having a storefront and people being able to look through the window kind of like the boardwalk when you see the taffy getting made, so you’ll be able to look through the window and see the workshop and the production of everything we do,” Sacco said.

Some of the items in the store include charcuterie boards, houseplants and keychains and some are from other local artists.

“The point of this place was to bring in other artists not just ourselves. There’s a candlemaker. There’s a pottery person. There’s somebody doing concrete art. And a macramé artist. And then we have our woodworking,” Bilazzo said.

They plan on doing a Monthly Maker to highlight other artists.

“There’s so many talented artists around South Jersey, and I feel like nobody hears about it as much. And throwing the Makers Fest, we just come across so many awesome people that are talented too, so we want to showcase them here,” Sacco said.

Sacco said the most rewarding part of being a maker is seeing customer’s ideas come to life.

“When we get to give a customer a custom product, seeing them light up is like the best part,” Sacco said.

For more information about Pine Barren Pallet Works, call (609) 335-9561, visit pinebarrenpalletworks.com and follow them on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube @pinebarrenpalletworks.