Friday, June 4th
What is it about us and starting the day with a super nice woman who is totally into our line and makes a great buy??? This time it was Haley at Tintypes, a great home accessories store/gallery in Bath, ME. Haley owns the store with her three sisters who all live in different parts of the country but meet up in Maine in the summer to run the store. Tintypes was recommended to us by Beth from Sea Bags which if you haven’t heard of yet, you will very soon. They are a nimble workshop out of Maine that uses salvaged sails to make various types of bags. Very cool stuff and they are blowing up. Nicco incidentally has been talking to them well before this trip was conceived about a possible collaboration on a line. Stay tuned…As for the rest of the day, we stopped in Freeport to check out the Sea Bags store there and talk to Beth’s sister Rhonda who runs it—great shop!
- Old Orchard Beach appears to be the Seaside Heights of Maine and remember that everything is relative and that they don’t have guidos in Maine.
-Kennebunkport was a very cool town and we found a perfect store on another one of Beth’s recs. Daytrip Society is run by a couple from Maine who lived in NYC for a while and moved back to open the store so it has a very cool blend of styles. Unfortunately the owners were not in but we showed our wares to the manager and the girl at the counter. They also checked out the website while we were shopping which they were very impressed by and which they forwarded to the owner who was also a fan. Turns out I got a Patagucci bag for the upcoming trip to Spain (and cause Willy chewed through my current bag) and Nicco bought a gift for his Mom’s b-day. We also stopped by a classic posh barbershop/cigar lounge/mancave, Dock Square Barber Shop. Nicco chatted with Ed, one of the barbers, and his immediate interest in the sterling silver Cocktail Anchors was passed onto the owner who expectantly was out working on his boat. You won this round Daytrip Society, but we’ll be back.
Thursday, June 3rd
Once against we got off to a hot start. Sold mermaids and anchors to Window Panes, a nice home accessories store in Bar Harbor. The owner, Julie, couldn’t have been nicer to us. We chatted about both businesses for way too long (we have a schedule to keep), as well as the towns and stores in particular we should be sure to hit. Unfortunately the rest of the day didn’t follow suit. We have the strange habit of finding the best stores first thing in the morning which is great to kick off a day of selling but we need to keep that momentum going. We moved on to Camden, ME which is a cool little harbor town with potential but we weren’t able to close any deals. Once again people really liked the stuff but it was either too late in the season for them to buy or in the case of Star Bird, the wife (buyer) was not in and wouldn’t be back for a week. We’ll follow up.
Wednesday, June 2nd
After a relaxing Memorial Day in Westhampton Beach and Branford Conn. for Nicco, we banged out 8 frames to fill our orders from Tauk and Bev Cardo. Like most things of this nature, it took waaay longer than I planned mostly due to the fact that I never took woodshop class. We had hoped to leave early this morning for Maine, ended up leaving at 4pm and got in to Bar Harbor at 1am. Good news is that the frames turned out amazing considering that I picked up a router (don’t ask) for the first time on Tuesday. Needless to say the orders were fulfilled & out the door. Several hours later—ahhhhh, the flea-bag motel bed is amazing after 8 hours of working on frames and 9 hours of driving.
Sunday, May 30th
We were suggested to check out a store on Montauk Highway in Quogue called Bev Cardo. A friend of my gf’s mom works there so she called over and set up the meeting for first thing Sunday morning. Hungover, my gf got me up saying how her mom set up the appt and they were expecting us, etc so we headed over. We both felt weird about Lindsay listening to my sales pitch so she wanted to wait in the car which I thought that was odd so we settled on her moving into another room of the store to shop which as it turns out wasn’t a problem. I think we all would wish that our first solo sales experience could go this well. Both Bev and her daughter loved what we had to offer (thankfully) and we had a great conversation on Nauti & Co both about how it started and where it’s headed. Needless to say, another great store you can find Nauti & Co. in this season. When Bev an I finished the order of business, Lindsay tried to get me to check out a framed New Yorker cover they had upstairs which “would have gone perfect” in our Boken apt, but the thrill of the sale was quickly replaced by the remembrance of the hangover. We left soon thereafter. She’ll be back.
Friday May 28th
Finally got to meet with Judy, the buyer from Hildreth’s which is a small chain of nice home accessories stores in Southampton and East Hampton. We decided that she was going to make or break the LI leg of our trip because that is definitely a store we would want to be in. We stopped in Thursday and overheard the woman behind the counter saying how cute Nicco was (but unfortunately too young for her) so maybe that’s a good sign. Anyway, we were able to show Judy our stuff and she really liked it, especially the packaging, presentation and brand. Just as she told me over the phone, however, this is late in the buying season for many stores especially the bigger ones who carefully stick to a budget. She said she will look into the budget and let us know so we’ll have to follow up with her next week.
So we were out last night and talking to a couple of guys about what we were up to and they noticed the t-shirt Nicco was sporting. Turns out one of the guys, Tim, owns the surf store on Main Street in Westhamnpton Beach, Jetties. So we showed up today, showed him our line and he bought Barmaid’s and want to place a t-shirt order. Great story: The guy who works at Jetties bought one of the Barmaids we left there and gave it to his Dad for an early birthday gift. Apparently his grandfather had a boat called “The Mermaid” and this opener brought back some memories for the family. Long story, short Heineken’s were opened and a father/son beer was shared along with a nice, family moment. You can’t beat that stuff.
Thursday, May 27th
After starting our trip 1 for 1, we quickly found that not every town has a store perfectly geared to the Nauti & Co line:
- East Hampton – cruised through but didn’t even stop, all Manhattan high-end chains, basically 5th ave.;
-Amagansett: - nice town, no real fit;
-Sag Harbor - the home accessories stores were all too bright white and formal for us;
-Wainscott - on a tip we checked out Rumrunners which while a bit high-end could definitely be a fit for us, got our first smug, “we’ll take a look” blow-off reminding me why I never went into sales before.
Wednesday, May 26th
First stop on our three week Nauti & Co Northeast sales trip took us to the end of the south fork of Long Island to Montauk. The first store we sought out was Tauk which I found online. Tauk is run by two young women and focuses on vintage and contemporary home items, jewelry and fashion all with a quality beach lifestyle theme. Much to our disappointment, the store was closed (it was still pre-Memorial Day after all and very quiet in town). Not the way you want to start a much hyped (at least between us) sales adventure up and down the eastern seaboard. Feeling mildly embarrassed as the organizer of the trip that I hadn’t planned this out ahead I luckily remembered being surprised that the owners had their cell phones listed on their website (this is how chill the place is) and we called Staci who mentioned that she received our product info (see, I tried a little), liked our stuff (nice) and would be at the store in 30 minutes if we could wait around (saa-weet). So we meet up with Staci after a few minutes of exploring the town and she couldn’t have been any cooler. She initially discussed carrying the Nauti & Co line under consignment it being late in their buying season and all but after seeing our stuff, she decided to go ahead and give us our first sale (at least of Nauti 2.0). Pretty great, 1 for 1. Feeling good about ourselves, we set out to conquer the Hamptons. Be sure to get out to Montauk cause you have to check out “The End” and when you’re there stop in to Tauk, you won’t be disappointed.
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