Our Journey into the homewares, dinnerware and decor segments of retail are an unsuspecting event coming from two guys interested in only getting sticky with the making of our delicious honey but post pandemic and having two shops located one street from each other in downtown historic Saint Augustine, FL we kept getting the constant reaction from visitors.
The reaction came to a bit of a disappointment to me personally as the feedback was a general "oh, the two shops have the same thing". Hearing this as a small business owner can be a bit of warning and recommendation from the public that its time to shake things up. Having been out of ideas myself my mom, aunts and grandmother who are big supporters of our honey ventures gave us one one of what turned out to be the most ingenious suggestions. "How about you all sell things for the home?".
This suggestion came from strongly opinionated females in the family and it proved to be a great push for Austin and I. After all the lack of quality handmade items provided for both tourists and locals in the area was very apparent among the deluge of t-shirt and keychain shops. After all the nearest department store is either the Saint Johns Town Center or on the way to Orlando for the locals and who wants to stay in all day ordering online?
Our journey in this concept shift began with one of our many trips to Americasmart. This is a great trade show provided to retail owners both big and small to see the latest and greatest along with the tried and true of brands to stock our shelves. Going into it can be overwhelming if you don't have a plan. Our idea was simple we wanted handmade, quality, and hard to find items. It seems as time goes on the big box shops tend to offer less and less variety and the guess work of wondering how something online will look in person becomes a daunting task to predict.
Our first of many successes with the market was our great partnership with VIETRI. This generational handmade Italian goods company started by 3 ladies in the states proved to check all the boxes. After 3 years in our partnership we are proud to not only have met the owner personally Susan Gravely but multiple Italian artisans who make their products with our annual Italian Artist Signing Event held in November. To this day we are not only the number one provider of VIETRI products in the State of Florida but Nationally we are one of their top Retailers.