Topic du jour: trade shows.
Hi there, and welcome to the second issue of Fair Winds. I'm hoping to give you a little more of a personal, behind-the-scenes look at what we do here at Son of a Sailor with each of these.
Quick note before we dive in: this one's going out a couple of days earlier than usual, because by the time you're reading it, we're probably somewhere over Texas on our way to New York. We launch the Float colletion online August 1st and Shoppe Object starts August 2nd, and we wanted to get this in your inbox before we disappear into trade show mode for a few days.
We've got a big one this month, fittingly. We're heading back to Shoppe Object, for our first trade show since 2019, and honestly, unpacking how we got from "we do this every year" to "it's been six years" turned into a much longer story than I expected. So bear with me — here's where we've been, and why coming back feels like such a big deal.
We haven't done a New York trade show since 2019 — right before we decided to reorganize our company a little. We had no idea that literally right around the corner was COVID, which had its own ideas about how to reorganize our business for us.
At the time we'd worked so hard on reimagining what we wanted this business to be — efficient, human-scale, focused on the parts we loved instead of the parts that didn't bring us joy. I'm talking about HR here, people. I'm talking about needing room to actually design jewelry instead of just managing people. We were bigger then: nine employees, a sizable wholesale business, a storefront in Austin, and a new San Marcos headquarters that housed production, our offices, and fulfillment, and was conveniently near the home we'd just moved to.
Unfortunately, after a couple of years, it just didn't feel like it was vibing properly. We were also quietly in the middle of some really hard fertility struggles at the time — the kind of thing that takes up so much more of you than anyone on the outside can see — and on top of that, it's a small town, and it just wasn't quite the right fit. I didn't know at the time that San Marcos was basically a rough draft for what would become our San Antonio location — something I'm genuinely grateful for now. But it was a hard couple of years, and I found myself doing about 75% of my job in HR and admin, in ways that were very much not bringing me joy.
So we retooled. We got back to the core of what this business is and what we wanted it to be, and spent a ton of time figuring out how to produce and operate more efficiently, to carve out more time for the creative, inspired work we'd been missing. And right as we were about to take everything we'd learned back to the trade show circuit that had always kept our wholesale business thriving — COVID popped in and shook it all up again.
I think a lot of wholesale businesses that made it through COVID got back to the trade show circuit much sooner than we have. In that stretch, we also decided to move — first our home, from San Marcos to San Antonio, commuting back to Austin to keep the shop running. About eight months after we settled into our new house, we found the new space for the business. We ran the new San Antonio space and the old Austin shop side by side for a year before finally closing Austin for good, once we felt fully settled here.
So the last few years have really just been rebuilding our business in a new location and rebuilding our home in a new location, at the same time. Our hands have been full, to put it mildly.
But we've had the San Antonio shop for three years now, and we're finally feeling like we're in a groove. We're ready to head back to Shoppe Object — our favorite trade show — and get back in front of some of the incredible stores we've sold to historically. There will be old favorites I can't wait to see again, and a whole slew of new businesses that have started since we were last there. Exciting. Also, honestly, a little terrifying.
Our wholesale business needs this injection of new energy. But I also know a lot more now than I did before. It's hard to manage the three legs of this business — storefront, online, and wholesale — and we've joked for years that it's tough to get all three performing well at the same time. Historically we can get two out of three going strong. Heading into trade show season, we're focused on getting wholesale strong again without losing the energy we've put into the store and the website. For the first time, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can get all three legs working, together, successfully!
We have a great team now — small, three people, plus Billy and me — not nine. But we can do so much more with fewer people than we could six years ago. I'm looking forward to it, even though it's a lot of pressure. Deadlines help propel us forward, which is nice, but we never quite get everything done that we want to. That's the nature of it, right?
While all of this trade show prep is happening, we're also keeping our sights set on this wonderful community we're part of here in San Antonio. We're planning our next maker market with the girls from Wildcraft General — our third one — and it feels like such a special event to throw at Nolan + Pine.
We're also launching a new collection, not just to wholesale but publicly — we'll be rearranging the store and throwing a launch party to celebrate. It's a collection I genuinely can't wait for you to see. And there's an exciting collaboration in the works that I'll start talking about once the details are locked down.
To say we've got some exciting things on the horizon this fall is putting it lightly. If you're a maker, apply for the market. If you're a customer, come pop into the shop when the new collection is up — we'll be back from the trade show mid-August and getting it all out on the floor. (Though please don't wait until then to come see us — we'd love to see you sooner!) We'll be busy, a little hurried, and we probably won't get everything on our list done. After fifteen years, we're learning that's just the way it goes.
I think I'm going to get more comfortable talking about some of the challenges of this business, too, if that's something people are interested in. There's a camaraderie that comes from understanding a business beyond what the Instagram feed shows. Fifteen years in — through COVID, through tariffs, through the price of metals going absolutely bonkers — we've had our fair share of struggles, and we've just kept picking ourselves up and going. We've lost a lot of wonderful businesses along the way, and we've also watched some incredible ones get started. We're still here, still transforming. But it comes with a lot of learning, and a lot of "oh, no" moments. Let me know what kind of "oh, no" moments you'd like to hear more about.
In the meantime — wish us luck! Y'all are always so supportive, and it means so much to us. We can't wait to celebrate this new collection with a launch party in August — I heard Billy's already talking about getting out the snow cone machine for this one.
Until then, fair winds and following seas,
