Overview
I am a husband, father of 4 boys, and a recently retired Maine Army National Guard/Maine Air National Guard veteran proudly producing small leather goods from our home shop in Central Maine.
In 2016 I was working as the Maine Hero2Hired rep for the Department of Defense tasked with assisting Maine veterans during the employment process when I was recruited as the Marketing and Sales Director for the last remaining tannery in the state, Tasman Leather Group. During my time at the tannery, I worked in sourcing leather for designers such as LL Bean, Rogue Industries, Origin, Kurier etc., while simultaneously created a leather overstock company, Acadia Leather (still operating in Hartland, ME). To become more knowledgeable on product development and to have a better understanding of product manufacturing from our customer’s perspective, I began learning leatherwork on the side. In 2017 I felt confident to attend my first show and from there the business picked up. For the next few years I attended 20-30 statewide shows yearly on a part-time basis and went full-time in 2020 shortly after the tannery had closed permanently due to Covid-19. During the fall of 2020, due to Covid-19 restrictions on shows, we transitioned to primarily online sales, limiting shows to now a handful a year. We are currently looking at having our product move into the manufacturing stage with a manufacturing partner here in Maine to increase product availability and brand awareness.