Loyal Supply Co.

I'm Ryan Habeshaugh and I'm the creative director of Loyal Supply Company. I'm Kimberly Habeshaugh and I'm the producer owner of Loyal Supply Company. We started our business because we wanted more freedom in our life and we wanted to take a risk. Were at a point where we could, so we did. Our store has been open for five years now and we've been running our design studio for three years. Some of the earliest challenges that we had when we started our business were the logistical parts of starting a business, the paperwork that we had to fill out and just learning how to get an actual business entity up and running. After that I would say letting people know that we exist and that were open for business and trying to get people to pay attention to us. We started with retail and we quickly built a community around what were providing and the ask from the community started to change. They started to ask us if we could design for them or make things that they had in mind or wish existed. And when that started to happen we started to shift to be more of a producer of goods but also a provider of services. To connect with our customers we definitely use social media. I would say Instagram is probably the most popular platform that we use but because we're also brick and mortar retail store we get to interact with our cons We have found some of our best employees at local universities because there's a couple of colleges around our store with design programs. There's a lot of I think we live in a really cool time. There'software available all over the internet. We use QuickBooks, we use Shopify, we use Google Suite, anything that's available that's helpful we try to take advantage of. So one of the first things that we saw out when we started our business was a community. A community of So we're part of the Neighborhood Main Streets Association. Ryan's actually on the board and it's an organization that has allowed us to meet other business owners in town. They throw events, they let us know exactly what's happening in the square and it's just a good way to promote ourselves with Especially when you're a small business So one of our main goals at Loyal is to build community. As the community grows and the impact becomes larger that we have on the local Boston based art and design community that's what keeps us motivated. When we have events and people show up and when we make things and people buy it and support the artists We've gotten used to the pressures of a small business. Tomorrow is another day. There's plenty of time. I think we owe a lot to the people that we've worked with over the years. Everybody that we've spent time with that's taught us certain things and allowed us to be where we are today. Without them this would be impossible. I would tell anyone that's interested in starting their own business to make a plan but be comfortable changing it because you really never know what starting a small business is going to throw at you and you have to be flexible in order to grow and continue to be who you want to be.