From our founder:
"I missed the days of knowing where your money is going. Or, maybe not entirely…
I grew up in a small midwestern town (10k residents). We had one major hospital, three schools, a few competing banks, and eventually… a Wal-Mart.
Before Wal-Mart, when I needed a new pair of shoes to vandalize the streets of town on my skateboard, it was Brown’s Shoe Store. I went to high school with Chad Brown, and his family owned the store.
When we went to lunch after some special mass, it was Cowan’s Restaurant, owned and operated by the Cowans family.
During the holidays, we’d travel to my mom’s hometown Blair, NE, where Jim Scheffler owned the sporting goods store - and where I did my Christmas shopping.
My mom recalls, “When you walked in you could smell the wood of the bats and the leather of the gloves.”
I just remember that every year he let me get the biggest handful of tees I could hold in my pre-pubescent palm and dump them in a little brown bag. Enough tees to last my grandpa all year. When he passed away, we found a huge pile of those tees in the basement next to his “golf bench.”
That’s the way it was before Wal-Mart. You knew the "family" who owned the store.
And when you spent money with that family, you felt good.
You knew where that money was going. Maybe they had kids the same age as yours. Maybe money was tight and you felt good contributing. Or maybe you just took it for granted that the person you handed your money to wasn’t trying to scam it out of you.
I love that buying my skate shoes helped put food on the table for the Browns’.
I love that Jim Scheffler remembered me, even though he only saw me once a year to buy tees.
And I love when I can support a friend or family with a purchase I need.
Is love too much to ask in commerce? I don’t think so.
It may take more effort. It may not come at a discount. But it comes with something so much better."
Loving the producers, the shops, and the families with every mindful purchase I make,
Sam Goulden
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