Ten Years of Laurel Mercantile

It is hard to believe that this December will mark ten years since the Laurel Mercantile Co. opened its doors!

Ten years feels like such a long time when you say it out loud, but when we started pulling up old photographs and rereading some of the things we wrote in those early days, it somehow feels like yesterday. We can still remember what that building looked like when we first walked through it, the feeling of having absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into, and the excitement of believing that maybe, just maybe, we could bring an old piece of Laurel's history back to life.

The original Laurel Mercantile Co. had been a part of downtown Laurel beginning in 1901, long before any of us had ever imagined that we would one day be standing in its place. Erin had always loved the story of the original store, and in 2016, what had been a fondness for an old name slowly became an idea: what if we brought the Mercantile back?

That idea became a conversation over dinner with friends, and that conversation became a business plan, and before we had much time to think about whether or not it was a good idea, we had found ourselves with a building and a deadline. We were going to open by Christmas.

Looking back, there is something almost comical about how much we thought we could accomplish in six months. Home Town was already filming, the "framily" members were running other businesses and raising their families, and now we decided to renovate an old building and open a retail store at the same time. There were a lot of late nights and a lot of learning as we went, but there was also something really wonderful about that season because all six of us believed in the same thing. We believed that Laurel was worth investing in, and that was enough to get us started.

By December, the doors were open.

We had no idea then that the people walking through those doors would eventually become one of the greatest parts of the story.

At first, it was our neighbors and friends and people from around town, and then Home Town premiered and suddenly people who had never heard of Laurel were making plans to visit. We watched with amazement as families drove in from other states, sometimes from several states away, because they had fallen in love with our little town from their living rooms and wanted to see it for themselves.

It was exciting, of course, to see people coming through the Mercantile, but what mattered even more to us was watching them discover Laurel.

That has always been at the heart of what we hoped the Mercantile could be. We never wanted it to feel like a store that happened to be in Laurel; we wanted it to feel like a little expression of Laurel itself. We wanted the things on the shelves to tell stories about the people who made them, the places they came from and the values we believed were worth holding onto. We wanted someone who lived here to feel proud to bring a friend through the doors, and we wanted someone visiting for the first time to leave with a better understanding of why we love this place so much.

As the years went on, that idea began to shape the business in ways we couldn't have predicted when we opened.

We started thinking less about what we could find to sell and more about what we could make ourselves. We became increasingly interested in American manufacturing and in the possibility of creating good, useful things right here at home. The more we learned, the more we understood that choosing to manufacture in America isn't simply a decision about where a product is made. It is a decision about who gets a job, which communities get to keep their trades, whether young people have opportunities to learn skilled work, and whether we are willing to invest in the kind of future we want to see in our own hometown.

That lesson has probably been one of the most important of the last ten years.

Making things in America is not always the easy choice, and we've learned that firsthand. There have been plenty of times when we've had to figure out how to make something work when it would have been much simpler to do it another way. We've learned about machinery and materials and production schedules and all of the unglamorous pieces that go into making something beautiful and useful. We've made mistakes, fixed them, started over, and learned that the people behind the work are every bit as important as the finished product. 

Eventually, that desire to make things brought us to the factory, which is still one of the more remarkable turns in this story when we think about where we started.

We opened the Mercantile as a little shop.

Somehow, along the way, we found ourselves learning how to manufacture.

And that wasn't the only thing that changed.

Laurel was changing, too.

The downtown we knew when we opened those doors in 2016 was not the same downtown we were standing in five years later. Businesses opened. Buildings were restored. People who had once left came home. Visitors became familiar faces. The town became busier and brighter, and we had the privilege of watching it happen from right in the middle of it all.

Then 2020 arrived and changed the rhythm of everything.

We don't need to tell you what those years felt like because you lived them, too. We watched plans disappear and businesses struggle and everyone try to figure out how to move forward when no one really knew what the next week would bring. But when we look back on that season now, one of the things we remember most clearly is how quickly people showed up for one another.

Customers found ways to support the businesses they loved. Employees kept showing up. Makers kept making. Neighbors checked on neighbors. People found new ways to stay connected when the usual ways weren't possible.

It reminded us of something we had perhaps understood all along but hadn't fully appreciated yet: the Mercantile isn't really the building.

It isn't the shelves or the website or even the things we make.

It is the people.

The people who have worked here over the years, many of whom have become like family. The people who make the products we sell. The people who have walked through our doors once a week for ten years. The families who have brought their children in and watched them grow. The visitors who came to Laurel for the first time because of Home Town and then came back because the town became part of their own story.

When you have ten years of those people, you end up with a lot of memories.

There are Christmases we can still picture clearly, busy Saturdays that seem impossible now, products we remember making for the very first time, and things that once felt like enormous milestones that have now simply become part of the history of the place. There are people we met because they walked through the Mercantile doors who are now dear friends, and there are customers whose faces have become so familiar that seeing them feels like seeing an old friend come home.

You can make a business plan, but you can't plan for the relationships that will come from it. You can decide what you want to put on a shelf, but you can't decide who will pick it up and carry it home or what memory it might become part of. You can decide to open a store in a small town, but you can't know what it will feel like ten years later to look out the front doors and realize that the town around you has grown and changed right along with you.

That is what makes an anniversary like this feel less like a celebration of a business and more like a celebration of a life that has been lived alongside so many other people.

Because the Mercantile has grown up with us.

Our children were little when we opened. Some of the people who worked alongside us then have moved on to new chapters, while others are still here. We have watched employees get married, have babies, change careers and discover new talents. We've watched customers become parents and then bring their own children through the doors. We've celebrated good seasons and walked through difficult ones, and through all of it, the Mercantile has been this constant little piece of our lives in the middle of a town that we love.

Ten years later, the building looks different than it did when we first found it, and so do we. The products have changed. The businesses have changed and we even added a few! The town has changed. We've learned more than we knew we needed to learn, and we've probably learned most of it the hard way. 

But the things that mattered to us in the beginning still matter.

We still believe that it is worth making something well, even when making it well takes longer.

We still believe that where something is made matters.

We still believe that a small town is worth investing in, and that keeping a hometown strong isn't accomplished by one grand gesture but by thousands of ordinary decisions made by people who care enough to stay, to build, to work and to believe.

And we still believe that the best things are built with other people.

That may be the greatest gift the Mercantile has given us over these last ten years. We thought we were opening a store, but what we really did was create a place where our lives could intersect with the lives of so many other people. We got to make things with our friends, work alongside people we love, meet people from all over the country, and watch our hometown find a new chapter.

We got to be here.

And after ten years, that feels like something worth celebrating.

So this December, when we look around the Mercantile and think about everything that has happened since we first opened those doors, we won't just be thinking about the products we've made or the businesses we've built or the milestones we've reached. We'll be thinking about the people who made all of it possible.

The six friends who sat around a dinner table and decided to take a chance.

The people who helped us turn an empty building into a store.

The employees who have given pieces of their lives to this place.

The makers and manufacturers who have taught us what it means to make something with care.

The neighbors who believed in downtown Laurel.

The customers who have walked through our doors for ten years, whether they live five minutes away or had to drive all day to get here.

And, most of all, the people who have allowed the Mercantile to become a small part of their own stories.

Ten years ago, we hoped we were building something that would last.

We didn't know exactly what that would look like, and we certainly couldn't have imagined all of the roads it would take us down.

But here we are, a decade later, still making things, still learning, still investing in Laurel and still grateful that we get to do it alongside so many people we love.

When we think about the next ten years, we don't really know what they will hold.

But if the first ten have taught us anything, it's that the best stories are usually the ones you couldn't have written in advance.

And we're awfully grateful to have been here for this one.